Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-10)
Mr Jim Murphy, and Ms Jennifer Cole
3 JULY 2008
Q1 Chairman: We normally see you after
each one of the European Councils. The June European Council,
because of a whole variety of other matters, does not seem to
have had an enormous amount of direct foreign policy matter included
in it. I do not know whether there is anything you particularly
feel you should bring to our attention. We were concerned perhaps
on two matters. One was the collective efforts to meet the Millennium
Development Goals, on which we have been in correspondence with
DfID, but also the question about the European Council taking
sufficiently decisive and far-reaching action to address the problem
of high food prices, not merely thinking of that as a problem
for Europe but also, very significantly, for less developed countries.
Mr Murphy: You are correct in saying
that the European Council had a remarkable focus inevitably on
what happened in the Republic of Ireland, and I will happily respond
to any questions your Lordships may have, if time allows and if
you would find it helpful. As an aside to that, food and fuel
prices and the Millennium Development Goals were important discussions
and conclusions. On the Millennium Development Goals there was
a recommitment to the Agenda for Action. The important point is
that it is a recommitment without backsliding. The reason why
I mention that is that, in a context of the fiscal pressures that
respective governments are under in Europe, there is a continuing
commitment to that. Without being too specific, there was a sense
that some Member States wished to revisit or repackage how this
was measured, and the achievement there is that we did not slide
back at all on Millennium Development Goals. The frank assessment,
which your Lordships already know about but it is a continuing
frank assessment, is that we are not on track with the Millennium
Development Goals and, while the European Council discussed and
reconfirmed its commitment, the plan of action at the moment does
not get us to where we wish to be in the Millennium Development
Goals, even with this renewed commitment and so the Prime Minister
has made it very clear that we need to see further action. On
food and fuel prices, there are a number of measures which I think
your Lordships are already aware of in terms of the specifics
announced at the European Council, but there are a couple of wider
points to mention. Firstly, the conclusions and agreements at
the European Council will not of themselves change the global
food market. One of the things that fuels Euro-scepticism is firstly,
understating achievements in the context of the European security
and the things we have been speaking about, but also over-claiming
success. I think it would be an over-claiming of success to suggest
that the conclusions of the European Council in and of themselves...
They can alleviate in the short to medium term but they will not
resolve the issues and also we have to, in this context, recommit
ourselves, and the UK Government certainly does, to a radical
overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy. Our argument is that
it is actually hindering our ability to deal with global food
prices, because it distorts the food market. There are others
who are drawing a different conclusion from the position we are
in at the moment, but in the UK Government context, we believe
it strengthens our argument.
Q2 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
I raised the question of the CAP in Brussels. I was told there
was some settlement in place which meant that it could not be
reviewed for a very large number of years.
Mr Murphy: That is right. What we currently
have is what is catchily titled the CAP health check, which is
about assessing whether the previous reforms have delivered and
whether they are keeping pace. The most fundamental CAP review
is within the EU budget review more generally. So in terms of
the French presidency—and this is sometimes, for understandable
reasons, seen as a UK-French debate, which it is not but it is
seen as that on occasion. It is not just a UK French debate. It
has a very close tie to the European Security Strategy because
if we are going to do all these other additional things, our view
is the European budget should not get larger. So in the context
of doing more on security, climate change, and other matters,
what is it you stop doing? As your Lordships will be aware, we
are considered to be both pragmatic and principled budget disciplinarians,
and therefore we have to stop doing things, and that is partly
about an ending or a reduction, a remarkable reduction, in subsidies
to European farmers.
Q3 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
If it all went well, how quickly could that happen?
Mr Murphy: 2013 onwards.
Q4 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
It is a long way out. What advice are you being given on food
prices? The problem for farmers has been for a very long time
until recently that food has been too cheap. There has been very
little incentive for people to grow more. How quickly will that
price mechanism cut in and what advice are you being given in
terms of natural production rising because the financial incentives
are there?
Mr Murphy: I do not have information
to hand about the kind of production track based on market dynamics.
I will happily talk to Defra and respond to your Lordships, if
you would find that helpful, but we are very clear, and the Prime
Minster has spoken about this, that there is a conflicting analysis
or conflicting conclusions, but for us this is caused by a spike
in demand and climatic pressures. It is a combination of at least
both of those factors that has led us to where we are. Other people
are drawing different conclusions, but, both in terms of food
and fuel prices, those are the two common factors.
Chairman: Lord Hamilton might be reassured
to know that the Select Committee together with the Commons Select
Committee and Members of the European Parliament took evidence
from the Budget Commissioner earlier this afternoon, and she is
carrying out a public consultation on reforming the budget. One
of the most interesting things was that almost everywhere, and
not merely from the United Kingdom, the public when they were
sending in their views, one of the things they were all pretty
clear about was that there was a need to reduce the amount spent
on the CAP. So this is not just a British particularity. There
is a good deal of support for it, even though there are these
time constraints.
Q5 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
Surely, the most useful thing the European Union could do on this
question of food prices, apart from producing more funds for the
World Food Programme, which are desperately needed because of
the fact that, of course, the funds budgeted buy much less food
than they would have done before the prices rose. That I believe
is going to be discussed at the G8 summit. The biggest and quickest
thing the European Union could do is to conclude the Doha round
of trade negotiations. On that there have been some extremely
discordant noises in recent days coming out of, on the one hand,
the Commissioner responsible for trade policy, and the other the
President who holds the presidency of the European Union. It is
pretty disturbing, frankly, because the Doha round mandate does
contain within it a way in which there could be a much more market-oriented
response to these high prices than if you did not proceed with
Doha, because it both reduces subsidies or commits people to reduce
subsidies and commits them to reducing barriers to trade, and
all of that ought to enable a proper market-directed response
to these higher prices which will no doubt then produce more food,
as it did in the 1970s. Is the Government able to cast any light
on this scrapping that is going on between the President of France
and the Commissioner for Trade Policy? Is it going to lead to
the sort of paralysis in the European position which would actually
be very negative?
Mr Murphy: We certainly would not wish
to add any heat to the scrap, so I will try and shed some light.
Of course, your Lordship's initial response, which is a common
response, was in the first 24 or 36 hours after the Irish vote
as to why the Irish voted no. The Irish voted no because of everything
and nothing really. There were all sorts of different reasons.
I do believe it is a simplistic assessment to blame Peter Mandelson,
particularly when you consider that the Irish farming community,
albeit belatedly, campaigned for a yes vote. It is the Doha round
more generally. In the context of the food price hikes, the real
losers in climate change we all know are always the poor. Many
UK farmers feel the pressure—of course they do, but the
real losers are those living in grinding poverty, which makes
the Doha round even more important. The last I heard when I have
spoken to Development Ministers was that there was a degree of
increased optimism about the deliverability in terms of an agreement
to have international ministerial meetings on it, which in itself
is an important step forward in terms of the staging. Can it be
done? I think your Lordships know this. We determined that it
should be done, we believe it can be done, but that is not the
same as it will be done. We think it is a fundamental piece of
international economic political architecture in the context of
the things that we are talking about. We are working as hard as
we can, including the Prime Minister, devoting a lot of energy
to try and get the deal delivered.
Q6 Chairman: Thank you very
much indeed. The last question which I would like to come to is
an issue which we may well want to come back to in the autumn,
because there is likely to be a further proposal for an increased
size of the EU police mission in Afghanistan. In the same way
as we feel it is our job to see things when they are going well,
we also need to find out why some things do not go as well as
they should have done. Certainly, those of our colleagues and
others who have been in Afghanistan do bring back reports that
the EU police mission has not been a success. I was wondering
whether you could say something today, although we will come back
to this, on the strategic objectives of the police mission and
how far the staffing problems have been resolved, and whether
you feel that steps have been taken to improve the management,
effectiveness and impact of the mission.
Mr Murphy: The strategic aim of the mission,
as your Lordships are aware, is about developing Afghan policing
capacity to Western norms but under Afghan ownership. On the issue
of staffing, I think it is a fair assessment that it has not been
as effective as it could be, partially because of the delayed
deployment of fully anticipated staff numbers. I have here the
numbers, which were anticipated to be 232, and I think it is 153
deployed at the moment. I am advised that we expect to get to
a full complement by the autumn and I will happily keep your Lordships
informed of the progress towards that.
Lord Chidgey: If I may ask a supplementary,
Minister, I preface my remarks by saying that it is actually now
three years since I looked at the training programmes of the Afghan
police, so clearly, I do not go out every week and events may
have moved on, but there is one underlying issue which I would
be very grateful if you could address either now or later, and
that is the scale and the intensity and the appropriateness of
the training that is being given to the Afghan-recruited police
force members. When I was there, it was a matter of weeks that
was given to incoming recruits, and in fact Lord Anderson happened
to be the Chair of the Committee I was a member of at the time.
The impression that has always been given in debates in this House
and the other House of the numbers of Afghan police officers that
have been trained has gone on a parallel with the Western norms
you have talked about in terms of what we would expect a trained
police officer to represent. Quite obviously, if it is a matter
of weeks' training that is available, that cannot be the case.
I personally can understand that but I would appreciate it if
we could have a more detailed explanation of what it is that we
are trying to achieve in Afghanistan when we say that we are training
police officers to provide a proper domestic police force, under
Afghan ownership, to bring law and order to the country. I think
is very important that we have a better understanding of what
it is that we are trying to achieve and what is achievable, rather
than the sort of inference, maybe unwittingly, that we are actually
producing a fine body of men and women that we see patrolling
the streets of Westminster looking after our interests and our
safety.
Q7 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
If I may just add a rider to that, on that same mission what disturbed
us was the extent of the cultural differences, the unwillingness
of people to serve outside their immediate area, the problems
of women in the force and so on. Perhaps, Minister, it would be
helpful to give us a note on the sort of problems which Lord Chidgey
has described.
Mr Murphy: I will happily provide such
a note. However, your Lordships may find it helpful to be aware
you may already be aware, of course—that this sort of police
mentoring operation is happening now in nine provinces outside
the Kabul area, so that is progress. The point about the length
of these training packages, as your Lordship has personal experience
of having been to Afghanistan, which I have not of course, I think
is a fair one; they are relatively short training packages. I
will happily provide a note to the Committee with the length and
investment and skills. I think the US intervention is about paramilitary
and the EU one is about civilian skills. I will happily provide
more details.
Q8 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
Could you also address the problem raised by Mr Klompenhouwer,[1]
who made a very significant point. He said the chief of police
in Amsterdam's priorities are actually dealing with football hooligans—we
suggested some of them might be British—and really it was
a very low priority to provide some of his policemen to go on
missions abroad. That seems to be a permanent conflict. How are
we going to resolve this? At the end of the day, the immediate
concerns and also the worry that follows that, is that the only
man you do send on a foreign mission is retired, or not very good,
so you think you can let him go. How do you actually put good
people on to these missions, how do have them trained, who is
paying for them and all of this? I do not think much of this has
been addressed really.
Mr Murphy: I will have to provide as
much as I can on that, although I reflect that when I was in Bosnia
I saw the EU and NATO joint work, the military and civilian work.
It is difficult to see in just a couple of days but the three
days I was there I thought, after, again, a ropy and difficult
start, it really seemed to me to be remarkably cohesive. Not having
been to Afghanistan and seen for myself, I would not wish to say
that, apart from to say that there are 59 UK experts working with
the Afghan police. I will happily provide a package of information
around each of these three questions.
Chairman: We will have to check what
Mr Klompenhouwer said when we get the transcript but it was along
those lines.
Q9 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
He did not mention British football hooligans.
Mr Murphy: No, because I would say to
him that up until a couple of months ago Scottish and Welsh and
Northern Irish football fans are amongst the best behaved in the
world.
Q10 Lord Chidgey: Can I ask
one quick supplementary for information? Minister, one of the
issues you could advise us on is whether one of the reasons why
there are so few British police officers available in these areas
is because one of the requirements is often that they be trained
and certified to carry side arms. Certainly in the Balkans that
was the case. Only Northern Ireland police officers were actually
trained and experienced in carrying side arms and, of course,
there was a shortage of those available.
Mr Murphy: Certainly firearms training
is part of the preparation for deployment in Afghanistan. We would
like to have 20 police officers in this mission. That will nevertheless
remain an important part of the preparation.
Chairman: We think it is not only a question of this
not having gone right. We think there is a rather fundamental
problem about training policemen, a cross-cultural problem, and
although we do not want to take up too much time tonight on it,
we do think it is something which as a Committee we may want to
come back and look at in more depth and perhaps talk to you when
there is a proposal formally made to expand the size of the mission.
In the meantime, could I say we are very grateful to you for having
given us so much time. You really have helped us understand quite
a lot of these issues. We are very impressed by the way in which
you and your Department are preparing for the review of the Security
Strategy and we meanwhile hope that when you have got back from
the United States, you are able to have a reasonably agreeable
holiday. Thank you very much indeed.
1 Evidence given on 1 July 2008 by Mr Kees Klompenhouwer,
Director of Civilian European Security & Defence Policy Operations,
for the Committee's inquiry into the European Security Strategy.
See Corrected Evidence on http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldeucom.htm_euc Back
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