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6.8 pm
Patrick Mercer (Newark): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith). I hope that I will be able to make some positive suggestions, rather than be merely negative.
I pay tribute to the members of the American armed forces who have been killed over the past 24 hours in a series of extremely unpleasant ambushes and skirmishes in Baghdad and the surrounding area. Without wishing to be complacent, notably, there have not been British casualties for several months, touch wood. Clearly, the opposition in the southern part of Iraq may not be as serious as that in the centre and the north. It could also be that our excellent soldiers, sailors and airmen are doing a first-class job. Before going any further, I want to pay tribute to the work that they are doing.
Sadly, neither the Secretary of State for Defence nor his shadow is currently present, so I will not be able to patronise them to their faces, but I should like to point out how interesting I found their opening comments. I assume both men to be honourable and utterly rational, but they came at similar problems from two very different angles, which proved extremely illuminating. The Secretary of State made some calming and placatory comments, which I also found very interesting. In an interview of 4 August, the French Defence Minister said:
- "Europe has reached a point of maturity where it is now capable of isolating any one-off problems . . . Today, I reckon Defence Europe"—
- exists, even though it needs to be bolstered on the capabilities front, on which all the European countries must make extra efforts. But today we are demonstrating in Macedonia, where we took over from NATO"—
- and above all in Ituri [Democratic Republic of the Congo] where we are operating autonomously, that Defence Europe exists."
I still do not understand why operations such as those in Macedonia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo cannot be mounted underneath a NATO umbrella. Nor do I understand why, given that our
European partners' defence spending is falling continually, we are even contemplating adding another headquarters. Headquarters are expensive. They involve big fat chaps with red tabs—I can say that because I was one—who consume large salaries and are driven around in cars. But they do not carry a rifle or deliver a grenade. They do not keep peace or save starving thousands. They do not contribute, in terms of killing or saving, one iota. As has been said, anybody can plan; the question is one of adding money and capability and keeping people up to the mark, via the various different agreements and alliances that we have had over the years. My view is that NATO has stood the test of time, and that comments such as the French Defence Minister's are deleterious. My view is also illustrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), who said that a feeling of anti-Americanism most certainly exists abroad and about, in NATO and Europe, which is thoroughly damaging to the transatlantic alliance.
Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): I am listening to my hon. Friend's speech with great interest, but does he not realise that our French neighbours have the clear political ambition that the European Union should exercise an autonomous muscle and intervene in world affairs? It is easiest to start where there are less intractable military problems: in Africa, for example, of which countries such as France have much experience, and in which they have great financial and commercial interests.
Patrick Mercer: I am very grateful for that intervention. It certainly illuminates the point that I was struggling to make, but which my hon. Friend makes much more clearly than I ever could; indeed, it is made particularly clear by the conduct of the French during the war in Iraq. I do not wish to beat a drum or to aerate this matter more than is necessary, but the fact remains that we are standing on a dividing line in terms of where this nation goes: whether we look towards America, or towards Europe, in terms of our defence.
I should like to consider a rather more arcane aspect of NATO and European defence policy, and to discuss three different elements of what lies ahead for this nation's defence and its relations with America and Europe. First, it would seem that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) has just pointed out, European nations are concentrating at the lower end of the war-fighting spectrum in particular. My grave concern is that Great Britain is about to join the second-class military nations—a development that, in my view, will be heralded in the White Paper that will be published shortly. It will not only show the way in which our defence will be restructured; it will also disguise the swingeing defence restrictions—not cuts—that will be introduced over the next months and years. The grave danger is that if we are not careful Britain's first-class armed forces will end up being capable of standing shoulder to shoulder only on operations such as those in Macedonia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to which we have just referred. They will be incapable of the higher end of war-fighting that we have seen, and continue to see, in Iraq.
Secondly and even more significantly, just around the corner is the grave danger of trying to reap a peace dividend on the back of what I trust and pray is the
wholly laudable progress that will, I hope, be made in Northern Ireland. I am not alone in this view—the outgoing Chief of the Defence Staff made exactly that point as he stepped down from his post. He said that any lessening intention in Northern Ireland must not be used as an excuse for a peace dividend. I firmly believe that this Government will cynically attempt, on the back of any success that they enjoy, one hopes, in Northern Ireland, to cut our armed forces in such a way that they are capable only of dealing at the lower end of the operations that we have discussed. In this way, there might be a much more comfortable billet for this country as a third-class power, with other European powers rather than with America. That worries me gravely.I turn to my third—I hope novel—point. In a recent debate on defence policy, I tried to intervene to tell the Secretary of State that we need new and fresh defence thinking. He was introducing, in his inimitable way, the foothills of the White Paper. At no point in his comments was anything other than conventional war discussed. Our capability to deal with the asymmetric threat simply did not feature. Tanks, aeroplanes, ships, numbers, bullets and so on were mentioned, but intelligence effort, co-operation between uniformed and non-uniformed forces, and co-operation between armed forces, police forces and other forces that might help to recover from a terrorist outrage—in other words, the gamut of homeland security—were not touched on. The EU and NATO between them must look towards a totally different way of dealing with the changed threat. Only by so doing will we be capable of meeting—whichever alliance we are in, whichever way we choose to go—the threat that lies just around the corner.
Labour Members giggled rather hard at one or two documents allegedly written by Conservative Members, which were published in that noble organ, The Sun. None the less, I shall offer a quote. As a result of what that paper did—or did not—say, the fact remains:
- "Nicholas Burns, the United States ambassador to Nato, has said the EU plans represent 'one of the greatest dangers to the transatlantic relationship'."
6.19 pm
Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South): I do not think that a single speech this afternoon has dissented from that last contribution. Every hon. Member has supported the ongoing commitment of this country to have a strong relationship with the United States: no one has expressed significant dissent about that in recent defence debates. What they have done is suggest, as the Americans themselves have time and again since President Eisenhower first proposed that Europe ought to do more—successive American Administrations have argued the same point—that we have to share the burden. As the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) rightly said, if there was a threat to NATO, the biggest threat was the fact that Europe has, over the past 40-odd years, ignored the request and demand from the US to play—and pay for— a bigger role in the defence of the world through NATO.
We are right to praise the splendid results of 50 years of co-operation between Europe and our north American allies, which has delivered peace, but it is wrong to suggest that we can stand still. The American Administration have made it clear that they are not prepared to stand still and they demand that Europe move forward. What disappoints me is that they make that demand, and then want to exercise a right of veto if they do not like the direction in which Europe is going. Conservative Members have reminded us time and again of the role of the sovereign nation, but it disappoints me that they were prepared to give up that sovereignty by giving the US a veto on when our forces would or would not be used. That drift away from their prepared line seriously disturbed me.
The hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) was right to end his comments by reminding us of our commitments to the ongoing fight against terrorism. The sort of unexpected event that has beset the US, occurs all too often in Iraq and is all too frequently on the horizon in Saudi Arabia, elsewhere in Europe and, indeed, in the UK. Our lack of preparedness in respect of homeland defence is a significant issue, which Parliament must address. I would be greatly disappointed if any of the Government's proposals in the White Paper were going to dilute our commitment to homeland defence. I would like to see it strengthened.
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