Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
CHRIS BRYANT
MP, MS ALISON
ROSE AND
MR PAUL
WILLIAMS
28 OCTOBER 2009
Q1 Chairman: Minister, can I formally
welcome you to the Committee. You carry with you your onerous
responsibilities for, I believe, Latin America and now added to
it Europe. You will understand that we will not in any way split
our attention so that you get off the hook in any way in Europe,
because that is only our attention, as you know, so you will just
have to bear with us and double up your work rate, which I know
you are capable of. You might like to introduce your team for
the record.
Chris Bryant: Indeed;
thank you very much, Chairman. It is a great delight to be here.
This is probably the job that I would most ever want to have done
in Parliament and several members of the Committee will know how
many debates we have already had, several of us, in various different
forms. Even my loyal friends in the same party do not always agree
with me. I have two colleagues with me, first of all, Alison Rose,
who is the Head of Communications, Institutions, Treaty and Iberia
Group in the European Directorate, and Paul Williams, who is Head
of Europe Global Group, which is a wonderful title.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you very much.
I will hopefully ease you into this session. The general question
which, coming into this role, you must be aware of is that you
know that with previous European ministers we have had discussions,
particularly with Caroline Flint when she was in the position,
about the Foreign & Commonwealth Office's scrutiny performance,
which has not always been a shining example of good practice.
We know there will continue to be slip-ups because it is a very
busy department, but, for example on the Joint Action on the European
Security and Defence College, which was before us in the meeting
earlier today, the Government ignored a request for information
from us for a year, and then when we received a letter from the
Minister, which was the subject of our discussion today, it was
three months after the Minister had signed the letter on that
particular issue. There can be excuses but there can be no acceptable
reasons for such slip-ups. We also had problems over the EU-Ukraine
agreement, where the Joint Committee could not understand the
professed need for urgency on that particular issue, so I think
you have to accept that sometimes the Committee think that, despite
all the ministerial expressions to the contrary, the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office is not, in its heart of hearts, committed
to the scrutiny process. How would you defend the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office from that accusation, and how will it perform
under your control of European matters?
Chris Bryant: Thank you, Chairman.
Two things I would say. The first is, as former Deputy Leader
of the House, I passionately believe in the role of Parliament.
I believe that the scrutiny that Parliament brings to Government
can only make it a better Government, a more effective Government
and more responsible to the people who put us all here, and I
will do everything in my own personal power to make sure that
we are as effective in answering to Members of Parliament, in
particular members of the elected chamber, as possible. That is
true for a whole series of different issues in relation to scrutiny.
I will come specifically to the issue of the European Scrutiny
Committee. I think we have been too slow in the past in replying
to parliamentary questions, sometimes parliamentary questions
have been answered inadequately, and last year the Foreign &
Commonwealth office had one of the worst records of all departments
in answering questions. Since I have had responsibility for parliamentary
liaison in the Foreign Office it is one of the things that we
have been very keen to turn round. We managed to get all our parliamentary
questions answered fully and swiftly by the summer recess. We
have tried to do better during the summer recess as well, and
we are absolutely determined to make sure that we do a better
job of that. In relation to scrutiny and the European Scrutiny
Committee, I presume it was the Defence Minister that you were
referring to, the letter in relation to the Defence College, and
not a Foreign Office minister.
Q3 Chairman: Foreign & Commonwealth
Office, yes, indeed.
Chris Bryant: I do not know which
minister it was then, but I am very happy to follow up the specifics
of that. I cannot imagine why a minister would sign a letter and
three months later it still had not been sent. That seems extraordinary.
If you are happy to give me details by the end of the meeting
I will chase that up. Yes, there have been times when we have
not met the stringent standards that we like to set ourselves.
I would say, having talked with European counterparts, that we
are the only Government that is providing on a confidential basis
some of the paperwork that we are providing to this Committee
and providing it as early as we possibly can. I think there were
some 90 letters from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office this
year to the Committee and I will do everything in my power to
make sure that you have the information you require to be able
to do your job as effectively as possible. On one issue which
I know you had raised with us, which was the COSI paper from the—
Q4 Chairman: We will come to that.
There is a big question that relates to that later.
Chris Bryant: All right, in which
case I will not finish that sentence.
Q5 Chairman: It is a good thing,
Minister, that you are anticipating where you might not have come
up to the standards we expect and I am sure you will do your best,
and I do commend your very short-lived predecessor in terms that
while in the post she did in fact initiate the process of offering
to send what I believe are called confidential fiches to the Committee.
Chris Bryant: Yes.
Q6 Chairman: That was very welcome
and will be welcome in the future. Can we turn to specific big
issues because there are some that we want to move on to because
matters will be coming to significant change when the Lisbon Treaty
is eventually fully ratified and implemented. I want to come to
the proposed European External Action Service, on which it says
that Article 27(3) of the TfEU, "constitutes the legal basis
for the Council decision on the organisation and functioning of
the EEAS (European External Action Service), and I will quote
it for the record: "In fulfilling his mandate, the High Representative
shall be assisted by a European External Action Service",
and goes on to describe what that will be. We obviously have a
number of questions on that particular area. What we know is that
a Council Decision will be required to create this European External
Action Service when the Lisbon Treaty is fully implemented. By
any measure this would introduce a very major change in the way
the UK conducts its foreign policy overseas. It is likely that
the Committee would want this Council Decision to be debated prior
to its adoption. Will you assure the Committee that the text of
the Council Decision will be deposited in good time for it to
be properly scrutinised and, if necessary, debated prior to adoption?
Chris Bryant: Yes.
Chairman: That is a very simple answer.
Q7 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: How long has
planning been going on for this European Foreign Ministry?
Chris Bryant: There is no planning
for any European Foreign Ministry because there is not going to
be any European Foreign Ministry.
Q8 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Do not be
flippant. It is the European External Action Service which, during
the passage of the Convention on the Future of Europe, was openly
referred to as the European Foreign Ministry, but if we wish to
be pedantic let us refer to it as the External Action Service.
How long has this been planned?
Chris Bryant: Mr Heathcoat-Amory,
as you yourself know from your involvement in the Convention,
there have been people who have been talking about elements of
this for some considerable time. In terms of specific planning,
there is no formal proposal yet in existence. There is the paper
which we have already provided to you in confidence but, as you
know, the proposal itself will have to be something that is brought
forward by the High Representative once that person has been appointed
and once the Treaty has been ratified, and at that point there
would obviously have to be discussion here. We want to make sure
there is at least the full eight weeks available for you to be
able to do your scrutiny and, if necessary, for there to be a
debate, but I do push back on the term "Foreign Ministry"
because I think it is a term which somehow is used, in the UK
anyway, to suggest that somehow or other this is in replacement
for the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office and it is far
from that. It is in addition to it.
Q9 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: There is an
element of self-delusion about all these things. I can tell you
that when it was being set up in the European Constitution it
was openly and frequently referred to as the European Foreign
Ministry because everybody knew that was what it had become, but
let us not quibble about that.
Chris Bryant: Let us quibble about
that, actually, because my assessment, and it may not be your
assessment, is that one of the things that Britain most urgently
needs in terms of its own foreign policy is for the European Union
to be more effective on the global stage. If you look at issues
like Iran, climate change, Russia, relations with China, for that
matter relations with Zimbabwe and Fiji, in all of these areas
we urgently need the European Union to be far more effective and
not to duplicate effort within its own structures so that we can
get more bang for our euro—I was going to say "buck"—or
bang for our pound, in deference to you, in terms of our effectiveness
on the world stage. I think that that can only be achieved if
you have a double-hatted High Representative who reports to the
Commission and to the Council, and that that person has handles
on all the levers that the European Union has within its structures.
I just think that that would be more effective and better for
British interests.
Q10 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: The European
Parliament would like this to sit under their authority. It is,
I think, the position of the Council of Ministers that its status
in the architecture of Europe will be sui generis, in other
words, it will not actually formally sit under any of the existing
institutions, so it sort of hovers in Euro space. This is obviously
of concern to this Committee because we want to know to whom it
will be accountable and whom we can question about the offshoring
of British foreign policy.
Chris Bryant: It is not the offshoring
of British foreign policy because the determination of any common
position in Europe will be an intergovernmental decision and so
we at any stage will have the right of veto to be able to say
that we do not want that to be a foreign policy initiative of
the whole Union. If individual Member States want to co-operate
on something then that is entirely up to them, so it will not
be the offshoring of British foreign policy, but it will be us
seeking to create a European Union that is more effective on the
world stage. One issue where I feel this very strongly is in relation
to China because China has many options in the world at the moment.
It can gobble up large chunks of Latin America, which it is doing
very rapidly. It can form much stronger relations with areas of
Africa, and it can, if it chooses, just ignore the European Union
if the European Union chooses not to be effective in its relations
with it, and that is one of the areas where we believe that Europe
should be far more engaged, co-ordinated and effective.
Q11 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: If I may
say so, you are answering a question I have not asked you. I am
interested in the accountability point. You are, I think, by implication
saying that the European Parliament is wrong about it sitting
under the Commission, or indeed under the European Parliament,
because you are suggesting that if we want to interview people
in the External Action Service about the development and the implementation
of European foreign policy we do it all through the Council.
Chris Bryant: The External Action
Service will sit underneath the High Representative. The High
Representative will be a member of the Commission and will be
accountable to the Council.
Q12 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: So we have
got a problem there, have we not, that he is partly in the Commission
and partly in the Council? Have we not got an institutional confusion
there, that the lines of accounting and reporting are really blurred?
If we want to find out and interview or take evidence from people
such as yourself and your officials in the European context, exactly
how do we do that when it hovers rather insecurely under the High
Representative, who is partly in the Commission and partly in
the Council?
Chris Bryant: In part this depends
on whether Lisbon does get ratified, but I note with interest
that you are presuming that it is going to be ratified in the
next few days. I would argue that under the present arrangements
you have precisely that confusion because if you talk, for instance,
about what is the European Union's position in the Sudan, for
Sudan there is a desk officer in the Council Secretariat and there
is another desk officer in the Commission in relation to development.
There are also bits of people in the Commission with responsibility
for human rights issues, so I think that by bringing together
these elements we will be achieving something where you will have
a clearer line of accountability rather than a less clear line
of accountability.
Q13 Mr Hands: I have just a general
question about what you think the Government sees as being the
extent of the European External Action Service. Do you see it
executing common foreign and security policy/common security and
defence policy and even EU developmental assistance?
Chris Bryant: No, I think the
development issues will be separate. The most important element
is the fact that at the moment the Council and the Commission
have separate people working on the same countries and that is
clearly counter-productive. It leads to confusion, it leads to
a waste of resource, and we want to be able to bind that resource
together so that we can be more effective in individual countries
and we can re-allocate resources. There will be a paper that the
High Representative will have to bring forward to Council. That
is a paper which should be coming to you before we end up signing
it off.
Q14 Mr Hands: To try and summarise
that response, you do not see the EEAS taking on new roles or
new functions that are not already there; you see it purely as
combining the functions and roles that are already housed in the
Council and the Commission? Is that right?
Chris Bryant: Yes. For instance,
in a country where all the Member States of the EU have a significant
interest we would want the High Representative to be able to use
all the different levers that are available through from pre-conflict
to conflict to post-conflict to peace-building, and at the moment
those are spread differently around the various different elements
of the Council and the Commission and we believe that it is important
to have much better co-ordination. If I might just say too, I
think some people are being a bit anxious about whether somehow
or other this would be replacing UK missions, posts around the
world, or UK consular activity.
Chairman: You are anticipating a question.
You have, as usual, been a quick study on these matters and have
much to tell us but if you will wait for questions it will help
us all.
Q15 Jim Dobbin: Minister, we are
just trying to find out how all this will work on the ground.
How will it relate to the British Embassies and High Commissions
where agreed EU positions are concerned, and will it not now become
first among equals?
Chris Bryant: Let me take the
example of Fiji. As you know, Fiji was until recently in the Commonwealth.
There are very strong bonds between Fiji and this country. There
is a tension there at the moment and we want it to return to democratic
rule as soon as possible. Britain has an inevitably complex relationship
with Fiji. It is enormously useful to us if all the other countries
in Europe that have missions there say the same thing as us, but
it is even more important to us if the whole of the European Union
(because sometimes you just do not have a particular interest;
Latvia may not have a particular interest or may not have a mission
in Fiji) speaks with a single voice. That does not replace the
role of the High Commission in Suva; it adds to it, and I would
say that sometimes there is a temptation for individual Member
States in the Union to speak forcibly on issues in countries where
they have a historic link. We can cover the whole globe with all
the historic links the whole of the European Union has and I think
that therefore we can achieve more. The one other element—I
do not whether I am about to prepend another question by talking
about consular services.
Chairman: I will duly inform you if you
wander into another question; do not worry. You would in fact
anticipate the next question.
Q16 Mr Hands: The Swedish Presidency
paper, which we have already referred to, says that EU delegations
"could gradually assume responsibility, where necessary,
for tasks related to diplomatic and consular protection of Union
citizens in third countries, in crisis situations". Is HMG
content with that and do you think it might jeopardise tried and
tested arrangements for protecting UK subjects overseas which
many view as being satisfactory at the moment?
Chris Bryant: There are lots of
complexities in relation to consular services. First of all, Britain
has a unique understanding of the consular service that we provide.
It is ring-fenced money. Often people say it is taxpayers'. It
is not the taxpayer that pays for consular services; it is paid
for out of the services paid for by people who come to us for
passports and the rest. We would not want anything to undermine
that and we do not think that anything that is being proposed
would do so. Take, for instance, Laos. I visited Laos earlier
this year because there are two British people in prison there
and we wanted in particular Samantha Orobator, which I think is
a fairly well-known story, to be able to have a prisoner transfer
to a jail in Britain where she is serving her sentence now. We
do not have an embassy in Laos, we run our relationship with the
Lao government through Bangkok and Thailand, but the Australians
do and so the Australians were doing the majority of visits to
Samantha Orobator and we are very grateful to them for that. Sometimes
we do exactly the same for Australians around the world. There
is no reason why in certain circumstances where there is a major
crisis we would not be co-operating in a very significant way
with our French or our German or Spanish colleagues.
Q17 Mr Hands: But the problem we
have got, Minister, going back to your earlier answer about the
fact that you only see the EEAS combining pre-existing functions
of the Commission and the Council, is that here you have got an
example, which we think might be the first of many, where clearly
the External Action Service is taking on functions which are currently
performed by Member States. As you have just pointed out, the
UK, in co-operation with Australia, is clearly something which
is in our remit as a Member State, and yet the Swedish paper is
describing something whereby the European Union will start to
muscle out the Member States in terms of their consular functions,
in this case in crisis situations, and what starts as a crisis
situation could easily then be taken into other situations. I
think that is where our concern is.
Chris Bryant: It would never muscle
out the British consular provision.
Q18 Mr Hands: It says here "could
gradually assume responsibility". That sounds like muscling
out.
Chris Bryant: It does not sound
like muscling out to me, I have to say. I can see why there would
be some smaller countries that do not have representation, do
not have consulates in some parts of the world, who might want
to argue that there should be much greater co-operation in some
countries. As I say, it is specifically done between different
members of the European Union. We would be opposed to moving towards
a situation which suggested that our consular service was in any
sense going to be compromised by anything that was being done
by the External Action Service.
Q19 Kelvin Hopkins: If I can go back
a bit, first of all can I say how pleased I am to see you in your
job, and congratulations again, genuinely so, as someone who really
knows the subject and is enthusiastic about it. In a sense is
this not a case where easy cases make bad law, reversing what
one normally says? If you could make up simple cases like Fiji—we
would all agree on Fiji; but there might be other interests in
diplomacy where we might have more serious differences and which
might be hidden. For example, it may just be that there will be
serious differences between ourselves and Germany related to Russia.
Germany and Russia are much cosier than perhaps we are. There
might be serious differences if we handed over to an extent our
relations with Russia to the European Union. We have not quite
got yet what we want from that and there might be problems there.
Can you not see that there could be problems arising in different
parts of the world from what looks like a very good idea to begin
with and then suddenly starts to become a possible monster for
the future?
Chris Bryant: You are sitting
next to the Russia expert on your right: Mr Hands. I do not think
it is a zero sum game, in particular in relation to our relationship
with Russia. For the last few years it has been complicated, in
particular because of the Litvinenko case, as well as extradition
cases where Russia has wanted to extradite from the UK, but I
would argue that in terms of energy security, for instance, it
is definitely in our interests for us to have a European Union
that is far clearer in its relationship with Russia. If the Union
wanted to go down a policy direction in relation to Russia that
we did not like we would have an absolute right of veto and we
would say, "No, that is not going to be the EU position".
It might be the position of Germany, Austria and Estonia, just
for the sake of argument, but it is not the British position and
it is not the EU position. That is why I think it is absolutely
vital that this remains an intergovernmental policy area where
we have a right of veto. In particular in relation to Russia,
I think there is an enormous amount for us to gain.
Kelvin Hopkins: I agree, but it is very
interesting. The pipeline has to go across Germany so they have
got a degree of control.
Chairman: That is a comment. It is on
the record as Mr Hopkins' view. We are very proud to have him
as a member of the Committee expressing such views. We are going
to move on, Minister, to progress on applications to the EU. Before
this Committee we have had just today correspondence relating
to the application for Albania. We have had material relating
to Iceland and it obviously came up very strongly at the COSAC
meeting for all European committees in Stockholm, and we have
had quite a bit of correspondence with your own office over Croatia
which we have visited as a committee and have made our own views
known on many of the issues.
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