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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I call the next hon. Member, I remind the House that there is a 15-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.
6.24 pm
Mr. Terry Davis (Birmingham, Hodge Hill): Inevitably, there have been several references to Michael Colvin's last speech in this House a week ago. In it, he dealt with several points, including the European security and defence identity. The same issue was raised by my
hon. Friends the Members for Tooting (Mr. Cox) and for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Rapson). I shall concentrate on the ESDI and deal with two aspects of it.
The first aspect was mentioned by several hon. Members. There has been much talk about the risk of damage to our relationship with the United States of America. Often, not enough attention is paid to the risk of damage to our defence relationships with other European countries. There has been reference to the effect of the ESDI on our relationships with Iceland, Norway and Turkey--members of NATO that are not members of the European Union--but we have developing defence relationships with other countries that are members of neither the EU nor NATO.
In the Western European Union, this has been a most interesting aspect of what has happened during the past 10 years. The WEU is not restricted to the 10 member countries, or to 15, 18 or 21 countries. Altogether, it increasingly involves 28 countries. As all members of our delegation to the WEU Assembly know, debates there include representatives from the Parliaments of those 28 countries. Indeed, we understand that, at the meetings of the ambassadors every two weeks, high-level discussions occur between not 10, 15, 18 or 21 but 28 countries. As a result, there is a gradually developing and evolving defence relationship, which should be welcomed.
Many hon. Members recognise that Europe constitutes more than the 15 member countries of the EU or the 15 plus the six applicant countries whose negotiations are a long way down the road. In fact, at least 28 countries are recognised as being in Europe and want to be involved in peacekeeping operations. Many have sent contingents to operations such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo. Indeed, the operation in Albania a few years ago involved contingents from countries that are in neither the EU nor NATO.
In development of the ESDI, there is a great risk of excluding such countries. That is not to say that we should oppose the ESDI; we should ensure that countries that have become gradually involved over the past decade in our defence arrangements, particularly peacekeeping, continue to be involved--and more and more deeply--because we can benefit from their contributions. They include several that only 10 years ago were among those that had signed up to the Warsaw pact, and, indeed, some that were part of the Soviet Union. We can only gain from their increasing involvement in security and defence arrangements in Europe.
When dealing with the issue in his winding-up speech on Tuesday, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces missed the point. It is clear, after reading carefully his remarks in Hansard, that he was talking only about non-European Union countries that are members of NATO. There is a wider Europe, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence will describe what the Government propose to do about all 28 countries and not just the 15 member states plus Iceland, Norway and Turkey. Important though those three countries are, the others also need to be considered. That brings me to the second aspect.
The involvement of the countries to which I have referred not only at intergovernmental level but in the Assembly of the WEU is beneficial not only to us but to them. Members of their Parliaments attend meetings,
take part in committees--as well as the Assembly--and engage in discussions, debate and sometimes arguments with us and our allies. They feel that they are getting to know us; it is a confidence-building measure. Their parliamentarians learn that we are not bad people and we begin to realise that their concerns are genuine, to understand them and to think about what can be done to provide reassurance. There are great benefits to be derived from the involvement of Members of Parliaments on a genuinely pan-European basis.
A further benefit arises from the fact that the WEU Assembly provides the sole form of democratic or parliamentary scrutiny. I emphasise the difference between scrutiny and accountability. Most of us are pleased that the Government have emphasised that, under future arrangements pertaining to the ESDI, accountability as far as the British Government are concerned will be to the House. However, that is not the point. The point is that there should also be parliamentary scrutiny of the joint institutions and the provision of assets for the ESDI. That cannot be done by the House--even its worthy Select Committee on Defence. It should be done jointly, collectively and co-operatively and involve the representatives of the Parliaments of other countries.
I am not arguing that the WEU Assembly should be preserved in its current form. There are many things wrong with it and it could be improved. Members of the delegation could make several useful suggestions to improve the functioning, the membership and even the name of the Assembly. However, that is not the point. The point is to ensure that, with the development of the ESDI, parliamentary scrutiny continues. That means scrutiny by Members of this Parliament and Members of the Parliaments of all the countries involved with the ESDI and those that are associated with its peacekeeping tasks and provisions.
I urge the Government not only to ensure that our colleagues from countries that are not members of NATO or of the EU continue to be involved, but that there is a machinery for co-ordination and liaison and that joint scrutiny of joint institutions is preserved, extended and developed at pan-European level.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith (Wealden):
I join right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House in expressing my condolences to Michael's family and my deep appreciation of all that he did. The quality of his that stands out most in my mind is not his expertise, but the quiet way in which he expressed his views and the strong resolve that lay behind them.
I hope that it will not bore the pants off the House, but I, like both previous Labour speakers, want to talk about the European security and defence identity. With the hon.
Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook), I have visited large chunks of America as part of the NATO parliamentary assembly and, in Brussels, met members of the EU committee on foreign affairs, common security and defence policy--we have had a real going over.
In last week's debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) expressed, with his customary intellectual vigour, the considerable doubt felt in this country and in the United States about the real meaning and objectives of ESDI. The name itself begs many questions. If I were to refer to the British defence identity, I might be asked whether I was discussing an idea--strong on vision, weak on substance. The change of name from the European security and defence identity to European security and defence policy--that is what we are supposed to call it now--is welcome, because it will help us to measure the extent to which the EU means business.
I confirm what the hon. Member for Stockton, North said about a common thread running through our discussions with representatives of Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon and all the think tanks that we visited: what is ESDI? They asked whether it was concerned solely with directing a new structure, rather than with getting down to the hard core of defence expenditure and genuine collaboration. Underlying those doubts, the question put to us at every meeting was whether we could provide reassurance that Europe's long-term intention was not to detach itself from the United States and so weaken, and ultimately dissolve, the NATO partnership.
In last week's debate, hon. Members quoted European sources that supported the concerns expressed by our American friends. We should not doubt that the feeling of unease is not confined to a small minority of Members of Parliament or of the general public, but is experienced by the people of many other countries, including the United States. The people we met sought reassurance about a European resolve to maintain NATO that went beyond mere words of comfort. In short, Europe's intentions will carry conviction only if Europe addresses its defence deficiencies.
If there is little sign of a resolve to increase defence expenditure--I do not know whether any country intends to do that--the United States expects that, at the very least, current weaknesses will be redressed through better use of existing resources. That is not too much to ask. It means avoiding unnecessary duplication and poses a challenge, not only to Governments, but to defence industries on both sides of the pond. The defence industries in both America and Europe face the same problem of trying to decide who should pay for what and who should supply what.
As our late colleague, Michael Colvin, who served the House with great distinction, said last week, the United States is not alone in expressing such concerns. As the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) pointed out, the new structure will affect the non-EU members of NATO and EU members who are not members of NATO. The decision has been made, but it is only fair to remind our American allies that the end of the cold war gave rise to a demand for a re-evaluation of NATO's role, our role and that of all the other countries; there had to be a change. NATO's adaptation
included recognition of the need for, and greater support for, a more coherent and distinct European defence contribution.
After all, at NATO's 1996 summit, it was intended to build an ESDI within the alliance. Simultaneously, a revitalised WEU became the defence arm of the EU and the European pillar of the alliance. What happened? The WEU was called on to undertake only a few relatively modest operations. As the right hon. Member for Hodge Hill asks, whose fault was that? Was it the fault of Governments? In retrospect, it was a grave mistake. A revitalised WEU might have led to effective co-ordination and strengthened Euro-NATO co-operation, without arousing many of the anxieties and doubts about the EU's long-term intentions.
Since that time, the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam have provided further evidence of the determination to have a more active and coherent European common security and defence policy. As we know, that led to the appointment of Javier Solana as the EU's high representative, and the incorporation of the Petersberg tasks. Initially, those had been adopted by the WEU; we took them over. That initiative, preceded by the St. Malo declaration between Britain and France, implicitly and effectively bypassed the WEU and made it clear that Europe would develop the capacity for autonomous action, backed by its own credible military capabilities, where NATO was not, as a whole, engaged. I know from my visits to the United States that that came as quite a surprise to those in the US Government. It was mitigated to some extent by British officials, who said that it implied no radical change.
It is little wonder that at Cologne in 1999, the EU took historic steps towards establishing its own military capabilities for the first time, and at Helsinki the EU asserted that, prior to an EU decision to conduct EU-led military operations where NATO as a whole was not engaged, there would be a NATO right of first refusal. Can the Government confirm that they are right behind the concept that NATO should have the right of first refusal--a point raised by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) last week?
Should we be highly critical of the EU decision to deploy 50,000 to 60,000 troops? It is difficult to be critical, provided that that does not result in a split between the EU objectives and those of NATO. Some US policy analysts have asked whether the prospect of EU missions without NATO participation is an indication that the creation of ESDI within NATO has failed. How else, they argue, can one explain why NATO's EU members would support the creation of a distinct defence capability within the EU? We have embarked on a mission in which, like it or not, the UK can and should play a constructive part. It is not enough to be critical.
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