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Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow): What have the Government in Prague, whose forces have played such a valuable role in Kosovo, said about the proposals?
Mr. Hoon: A number of EU-aspirant countries were present at the meeting on Tuesday, which I have mentioned. They have indicated their willingness to participate and the type of forces that they would make available, so they are strongly in support of the initiative.
Sir Archie Hamilton (Epsom and Ewell): Does the Secretary of State agree that there is a growing isolationist movement in the USA? Does he think that these initiatives will encourage or discourage those isolationists?
Mr. Hoon: The right hon. Gentleman knows well that, over a long period, there have been debates in the United States as to the extent to which they should or should not be engaged in providing European security. My strong view is that, unless European nations are willing to take more responsibility for their own security--to strengthen the European pillar of NATO--isolationist tendencies in the US would be fuelled. A strong argument in the US is that the US electorate should not fund European security. I can understand that, so it is right that European nations should try to do better and try to do more. That is precisely what this initiative is about.
Mr. Tony Worthington (Clydebank and Milngavie): I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. I realise that the initiative relates mainly to defence, but it would also help in humanitarian responses to disasters.
In Mozambique, the British response was wonderful--magnificent; the European response was patchy and the NATO response was nil. At one stage, we were held up by the non-availability of an Antonov plane to transport helicopters to Mozambique. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in future, when lives are being lost and when only military capacity can deliver the means to save them, such an initiative can provide a response for the good?
Mr. Hoon: The Petersberg tasks include humanitarian assistance. Clearly, one of the lessons that successive Governments have realised that they needed to learn was about the provision of heavylift capacity, by both air and sea. That is precisely why the Labour Government--not a previous Government--have invested so much money in providing that capacity by air and sea. It will fulfil the needs described by my hon. Friend.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle): Will the Secretary of State accept that, although I was one of those Members who voted against almost every clause of the Maastricht treaty, I have never been opposed to close military co-operation with our European friends within NATO? May I remind him that my first political master, Anthony Eden, formed the view as early as 1937, that a second world war was unavoidable unless the United States could be heavily involved in European affairs, and that it was because Neville Chamberlain, out of hand, repudiated a secret telegram from President Roosevelt offering to intervene that Eden resigned as Foreign Secretary?
The Secretary of State knows perfectly well, does he not, that the French have long wanted to weaken European co-operation with the United States in NATO, and that this whole project is a French design to weaken Anglo-American NATO co-operation?
Mr. Hoon: I do not accept that for a moment. In answer to a number of questions that have arisen, I am absolutely convinced that, by strengthening the European pillar of NATO, we are strengthening NATO.
Ms Rachel Squire (Dunfermline, West): Does my right hon. Friend agree that of all the things we could do, the one that is most likely to weaken the American commitment to Europe and encourage isolationism is to listen to the anti-Europe isolationist rantings of the Conservative party, and to continue to allow the European nations to sit back and expect America to take the greatest burden of NATO operations and peacekeeping tasks?
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is about time that we had some answers from the Conservatives as to why they failed to strengthen European defence capability within NATO during their 18 years in office?
Mr. Hoon: My hon. Friend makes several telling points. As I spent the last two and a half days in Brussels and in Germany, I must tell the Conservatives that their political friends and allies on the continent are beginning to despair of the attitudes that they are now striking. Those attitudes may well simply be fuelled by the prospect of a general election--they may be no more than cheap political opportunism--but they are completely inconsistent with the position that they took in
government. The test that must be applied to them is: can they remain consistent while in government and when moving to opposition? In reality, they are completely failing in that.
Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex): The right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that for the Opposition to question these proposals is in some way anti-European is grotesque, and is deeply resented by the Opposition.
Everyone agrees that the Europeans need to do more for defence, a policy pursued with great vigour by my right hon. Friends the Members for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) and for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo) when he was Secretary of State for Defence, but always under the umbrella of NATO. Why, then, is there the need, other than to play a great political card, to undertake these proposals outside the NATO umbrella, thus duplicating the most effective peacetime military alliance of all time? In view of the right hon. Gentleman's quotation of Secretary Cohen, may I refer him to what Mr. Cohen said at Birmingham on 10 October this year? He said that it would be highly ineffective, seriously wasteful of resources and contradictory to the basic principles of the close NATO-EU co-operation that we hope to establish, if NATO and the EU were to proceed along the path of relying on autonomous force-planning structures. Will the right hon. Gentleman deal with that?
Mr. Hoon: But that is absolutely right. We are not relying on autonomous force-planning structures. We have made it absolutely clear--and I have made it absolutely clear in my statement--that there will be complete transparency. There will be no duplication of those planning resources. That has been agreed by all those who signed up to this process. A number of right hon. and hon. Members are shaking their heads. It is in the agreement. It has been decided. It is no good for the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) to quote the United States Secretary of Defence out of context as a way of seeking to validate his own prejudices.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Members for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) and for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Portillo) for the work that they did in government to promote European defence. I said that they took the process ahead and moved it along--we are simply taking it further. However, it is not true to say that their work was carried out solely in a NATO context. The Maastricht treaty was not a NATO treaty; it was a treaty of the European Union.
Mr. Mike Gapes (Ilford, South): Is my right hon. Friend aware that the biggest threat to the future of NATO comes not from Europe, but from the political platform of the Republican party in the United States and the desire of many people there to reduce its military involvement in Europe? Is it therefore not prudent for us to make preparations so that, if we face difficulties in future, we, as Europeans, can act on our continent to increase and enhance our security and to deal with crises as they arise?
Mr. Hoon: In answer to an earlier question, I made it clear that there has been a considerable debate over a long period in the United States as to the extent to which it should be committed to defending European security. There are those in the United States who argue that it should not spend a single cent of US taxpayers' dollars
on defending Europe. I am delighted that that view will not prevail. However, to resist that argument, it is important that European nations do more. That is precisely what the proposal is about.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith (Wealden): The Secretary of State would be very wise not to parrot the phrase that those who are opposed to the policy that he has announced are isolationist or xenophobic. I strongly resent such an attack. In fact, it only underlines his own experience in the matter--he seems more and more to parrot the phrases of the Prime Minister.
Does the Secretary of State understand that many of us are totally opposed to the concept--which is enshrined in the documents--that we should find a European defence community well embedded as a European enterprise that would ultimately be responsible, as it develops, to a European Parliament? If the Secretary of State thinks that those are the views of europhobes, let me quote the views of the chairman of the foreign relations committee of the Czech Parliament and of a Polish member of the national defence committee of the Polish Parliament. They say that it
- appears more and more that this EU defence project has less to do with rebalancing capabilities and more to do with political separation.
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