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Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green): What we should have been given today was a reasoned outline of the arguments in favour of the complete nonsense created by the Government. What the Secretary of State gave us--and it demeans his office--was a political rant in support of a Prime Minister in retreat over a policy U-turn that he made two years ago.

The reality is that the Secretary of State at no point bothered to answer the key question that he has failed to answer for the last year and a half, during which it was asked endlessly. What is this all for? The right hon. Gentleman says that it is for low-level peacekeeping tasks, as envisaged by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo) at Petersberg. But what do the others say? The French do not see it like that at all. Alain Richard says:

We could increase the strength of the deployable forces. The land component should allow us to deal with two simultaneous crises, including a high intensity one with a long term requirement for forces. The ability of the sea and airlift components to project forces and carry out deep strikes would be significantly increased. Here we could envisage an army corps supplemented by 6 to 7 brigades and 600 to 700 aircraft including 400 to 450 combat aircraft.

So that is to aid the civil power--a Petersberg task, just to help the police to get on with their operations in a difficult area? I think not.

Perhaps we should now consider what was said just last weekend in a briefing to German newspapers. It is not what the Government choose to say here. Die Welt,

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for instance, featured a headline stating: "The EU Army prepares itself for crises in Asia and Africa." The paper said:

The European Union plans to inform the world of a new Super-Army for heavily armed Military deployments in a radius of 4,000 km from Brussels. That will include large parts of Africa, the Middle East and the Caucasus.

That, in essence, is what those newspapers are being told.

The reality is that the Government are in denial. They have been in denial since the beginning of the process, because they did not start it for the purposes for which they now say that they started it. Why, following the creation of an organisation that apparently supports the Petersberg tasks, is it necessary to have available 100,000 soldiers on standby, 400 aircraft and 100 combat ships to back it up?

Furthermore, as the right hon. Gentleman should know--he may not have discovered it yet; if so, he should do his homework a bit better--if a soldier is deployed in the field he must be backed up, which would require another two for every one deployed. So we are now talking about 200,000 troops in deployment, and we are confronted with a completely different argument.

There is another point with which the right hon. Gentleman did not deal--a point that is not for the Petersberg tasks. Why does the right hon. Gentleman need a structure that is completely separate from NATO, and mirrors NATO? It includes a European military committee, a political committee, a security committee, European military staff, European intelligence and logistics support, and a headline goal that competes with that of NATO.

The reality is this. What the Secretary of State did not say is that the ambitions and proposals for this operation are far grander than he would want to let on.

There is another point about which the right hon. Gentleman did not say much. What about the European nations which are not members of EU, but which have been strong and firm members of NATO? This is not just about Europe; it is about the EU. Here we have nations such as Norway, the Czech republic, Poland, Hungary and Turkey, all in support. Yesterday, panicking about the idea that they were so far out of the proposal, the Government tossed them a scrap. They said, in effect, "You can come in if you want--when we ask you: when we call you. You will not be in from the word go, you are not members of the EU, and you cannot be involved in the planning process, so you will come in when we want." That is the key. That is why the Turkish ambassador said today "Frankly, this does not work at all."

So, we ask ourselves what the policy is all about. It is simply about a Government who dare not speak of their great love--their love to join the euro--which was rebuffed in 1998. Back in 1997, when the Government were considering the problem and the Prime Minister still thought that he would be able to join the euro, the Prime Minister said:

getting Europe heard more clearly in the world will not be achieved through merging the European Union and the Western European Union or developing an unrealistic common defence policy.

That was the Government's position in 1997-98.

The change came in December 1998, when the Prime Minister realised that the game was up for his entry to the euro and that he needed to show his friends and allies in Europe that he was a good European. He offered them the proposed arrangement, regardless of its impact.

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When the Prime Minister wants to know what other European countries think about the policy, he should perhaps remember why they are so keen about it. Joschka Fischer said:

it means an important step for the development of the European security and defence identity, another pillar of the process of European unification.

Mr. Jospin said:

By bringing its armed forces closer together and through its continuing commitment to peace and respect for international law, Europe must be able to complete that process.

Over there, they know what this is all about, and they say it every single day: over here, we have a Government who are in denial. The previous Government vetoed such an arrangement. The previous Government knew that the Petersberg tasks did not require a European Union organisation that would be a mirror image of NATO, discriminate against the east Europeans, dilute the forces available to NATO and duplicate NATO's organisation. The previous Government knew that, and the previous Prime Minister knew that. When he first started, even the current Prime Minister knew it.

Like everything else, however, we cannot trust this Prime Minister or this Government. When the opportunity comes, they will do a U-turn and change their mind as it suits them. That is the truth of this Government.

Mr. Hoon: Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to take the shadow Defence Secretary seriously on any matter that has the word Europe or European at the beginning. Sitting behind him are any number of right. hon. and hon. Members who consistently supported the then Government's line on Maastricht. When we were in opposition, Labour Members watched the current shadow Defence Secretary split his own party on Maastricht by consistently voting against his own Government, over and over again.

As I said in my statement, the hon. Gentleman has the merit of consistency: he consistently opposed Maastricht and all that it contained. That is not true of the Leader of the Opposition, who supported it at the time. Now, in opposition, for reasons of political opportunism, the Leader of the Opposition has chosen to change his view on common European defence. That gives the House, and indeed the country, a real insight into the current state of the Conservative party--which consistently opposes anything European. It also consistently turns any argument to that direction.

I am accused of not doing my homework by someone who talks about having 100,000 ground troops on standby--there is no reference to that. The reality is that we have committed to achieving a capability that could, if necessary, deploy rapidly. That is the whole point of the process--[Interruption.]

The shadow Defence Secretary scoffs. He is scoffing at the lessons learned from Kosovo--at documents published for and debated in the House--where we could not deploy rapidly in the crisis and were heavily dependent on the United States. Why should we not be able to deploy our own European forces together?

The shadow Defence Secretary also talks about 200,000 troops being on standby as a back-up. He should know full well that, when we rotate troops to a crisis, we have those troops available. Those troops are available to go to Kosovo. The reality is that 80 per cent. of the forces

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currently in Kosovo are of European origin. The reality is that, when we had the time to deploy, we were able to achieve that. What we were not able to do was to get those forces into a theatre quickly.

As for the 15 non-EU member states, they were present at the meeting; they were there on Tuesday. They offered their own forces as a contribution to the headline goal. So not only are the Conservatives absolutely determined to be isolated in the European Union, they are also determined to be isolated among 30 states that are prepared to participate in the process. The shadow Defence Secretary really gave the game away when he talked about people who are doing things for the United Kingdom as being "over there". That is his and his party's perception of Europe--Brussels acting against the Conservative party, against the narrow isolationist position of those who, in opposition, cannot see the benefits of European co-operation and are acting totally inconsistently with the actions of the previous Government, whom many of them supported at the time.

Mr. Bruce George (Walsall, South): When the Opposition spokesman asked what this was all about, why did my right hon. Friend not let the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, who is a trained shrink, tell him that it is more about paranoia, xenophobia and election fever than rationality?

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