Lithuania: Balloon Incursions
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(3 days, 14 hours ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We have plenty of time. We will hear from the Lib Dem Benches next.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, in a normal world, Belarus would be offering co-operation to stop this smuggling, rather than sneering and saying that Lithuania has to solve it. Lithuania has offered €1 million to anybody who can work out how to deal with these balloons. What are we doing, in co-operation with NATO’s centres of excellence in Tallinn and in Helsinki for countering hybrid and cyber threats, to ensure that we can find ways of dealing with the balloons? They represent a threat to the whole of NATO.
Royal Navy Submarine Force
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery (CB)
My Lords, could the Minister advise the House as to the progress of the floating dock construction to which he alluded just now? The programme was announced two years ago but has not yet shown any sign of going into production. Secondly, could he indicate whether there is any linkage between this and the Chancellor’s recent announcement of money to restore the Inchgreen dry dock in Port Glasgow?
Ministry of Defence Procurement: UK-manufactured Products
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from the Lib Dem Benches.
Baroness Humphreys (LD)
I declare an interest in that one of my sons works in defence procurement. In light of concerns raised about the reliance on overseas supply chains, can the Minister set out what steps the Government are taking to ensure that procurement decisions actively support UK-based manufacturers so that our defence capability is not dependent on foreign production?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches next and then it will be the Conservative Benches.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
Noble Lords will recall the Prime Minister’s announcement earlier this year of £1.6 billion in contracts for Thales in Belfast to supply air defence missiles for Ukraine, creating 200 jobs in Northern Ireland. The deal also included the prospect of a further £500 million of additional work to be added in collaboration with the Ukrainian industry partner. Can the Minister provide the House with an update on progress, including how many new jobs have been delivered and whether the extra £200 million of work for Thales in Northern Ireland has been secured?
F35A and F35B Jets
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches now.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the announcement of the procurement of the F35As. Some 15% of every single F35A will be produced in the UK. Does my noble friend agree that those who are calling for us to limit our involvement in this programme to try to restrict the export of these components would do huge damage to the UK economy and our standing in the world?
Defence Industrial Base
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Conservative Benches. We have four Conservatives up. Can they quickly decide which one of them wants to ask the question?
UK Defence: Hypersonic Missiles
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, we will hear from my noble friend Lord West next, and then the noble Lord, Lord Howell.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
Should the Chagos deal be signed—which I hope it will not be, because I think it is a mistake—we know that President Trump likes good deals, so will we negotiate with him that he will pay the £18 billion for the cost of hiring an airfield on one of our islands which we have given to Mauritius?
Drones: RAF Bases
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, the House will hear from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, does the deployment of Armed Forces personnel indicate that the local police forces do not have the ability to investigate drones, as required by the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Act 2021?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
As the operator of a registered drone under the CAA, my concerns are that in this country there is a considerable and increasing number of drones being operated by people illegally. They pose a direct threat, not only to military installations and the zones around our airfields, but around civil facilities. Can the Minister comment on how much policing is going on generally, and how many prosecutions of these illegal activities are taking place?
Relations with Europe
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Smith of Newnham
That this House takes note of the relations between the United Kingdom and Europe, particularly on issues of culture, diplomacy and security.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I thought it would be helpful to the House to remind all Back-Bench speakers that the advisory time for this debate is four minutes. This means when the Clock has reached three minutes, noble Lords should start making their closing remarks, and at four minutes their time is up. I have asked the Government Whips to remind all noble Lords of this fact during the debate, if necessary. I thank all noble Lords in advance for their understanding, which will enable everyone to contribute to the debate fairly, in the allotted time.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, this debate in my name is on a slightly different topic from the one that we got so used to debating in the last few years: the UK’s relations with the EU. It is intended to be a more general, open and inclusive debate, hopefully working with the interests and concerns of everyone in your Lordships’ House and people of whatever opinion in the United Kingdom and to help us think much more broadly about how we interact with our neighbours in Europe.
I will start, slightly unusually, with a quotation:
“The UK is not just any third country … we share deep historical ties and aligned interests … a stronger partnership is not just beneficial but essential for our security, our economies and our people … cooperation through dialogue, debate and mutual understanding”
is what is needed. Those words come from Sandro Gozi, whom many noble Lords may not have heard of yet but he is the newly elected chair of the UK-EU Parliamentary Partnership Assembly. When Members of your Lordships’ House and the other place have the next delegation with our European parliamentary colleagues, Sandro Gozi will chair those meetings from the EU side.
His words, spoken just last week, are indicative of a new flavour of thinking among our European neighbours. There was a period when discussions between the UK and our European neighbours—whether with the EU 27 as a bloc or bilaterally—had become very difficult. They were tense and scratchy on both sides, yet the importance of working with our European neighbours never disappeared. Whatever you think about the institutional relationship with the European Union, security co-operation with our European neighbours was and remains crucial. That has been especially so since February 2022 and the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine. Student and youth mobility are also extremely important to cultural co-operation.
I am delighted that this debate has garnered so much interest, and particularly that the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, will be making her maiden speech. She was a formidable participant in the other place, particularly as chair of the Public Accounts Committee, so we very much look forward to her speech. I am reminded that, almost exactly a decade ago, I made my own maiden speech. In making a maiden speech, one is discouraged from doing or saying anything controversial. It took me a while to find a suitable debate. There was nothing on fly-fishing, painting, pottery or whatever—something that would have looked entirely uncontroversial. But there was one topic on which I thought, “I know something about this”. This is where I declare my interest for today: my day job is as professor of European politics at Cambridge, where one of my research projects is on relations with other European countries.
The topic on which the Whips encouraged me to speak—I was a little worried—was a debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. It was a Motion to Take Note of the case for the UK’s membership of the European Union. The Whips at the time did not think that was too controversial, but many of the electorate clearly did not take note of the case that the noble Lord and I tried to make. Afterwards, in the cloakroom, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, came and said, “Good speech”. Obviously everyone in the Chamber makes laudatory remarks on a maiden speech—I have never heard any negative ones—but, outside the Chamber, it was possible that a passionate Brexiteer might have been a little negative. I said that I was trying not to be too controversial. He said, “No, you were just this side of controversial”.
I hope I have made it easy for everyone not to be too controversial in this debate, because our relations with Europe are necessary. They have to happen; the question is how we improve them. I hope that the rather general title of the debate offers the opportunity for an open discussion. At this stage in the Parliament, it is not intended to be hostile to His Majesty’s Government; in many ways, it is intended to try to empower His Majesty’s Government to carry on with some of the initial attempts that have been undertaken to work with our European partners, both at a European level and particularly through bilateral relations with some of our nearest neighbours, particularly Germany and Ireland so far.
The Lords Library has, as always, produced an extremely good briefing. We should have expected nothing less, but the briefing focuses very much on the last 100 days—the period since the new Labour Government were elected. My remarks will look a little to the past, as well as to the future, because some lessons can be learned about the previous “new Labour” Government. There is a lot of discussion about the new Starmer Government, but the new Labour Government offer some lessons, some of which are positive and some a little more salutary. I hope that, by the end of my contributions, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and others will be thinking about some of the things they need to avoid.
In the run-up to the July election, now Foreign Secretary David Lammy was making very positive remarks about strengthening the UK’s security relationship with the EU. That, in many ways, is still an open question. Whereas the withdrawal agreement and the trade and co-operation agreement have been settled, there is still very much an opportunity for strengthening our security relations with the European Union at the institutional level of the UK and the EU. Already, as the Library Note reminds us, the Foreign Secretary had been talking about strengthening relations with Germany, Poland, Ireland and France. Those bilateral relations with our European partners are hugely important because, in many ways, they are the building blocks for strengthening and enhancing our relations with the wider European Union and wider Europe.
It is timely to be thinking about bilateral relations, because the new Government have clearly looked for a reset in our relations. We are also at a point in the European cycle where the European Parliament had its elections in early June and the new Commission is in the process of being appointed, so there is now an opportunity for four and a half years of deep and serious discussions about security and defence but also cultural co-operation.
It is also important for us to think at a wider level about bilateral relations. In particular, I welcome the Government’s agreement with Germany. Last month I was on an IPU visit to Berlin, where we had many very significant discussions with committees from right across the Bundestag. There was clearly a lot of interest in working with the United Kingdom on a bilateral basis on defence and cultural issues and understanding that it would be desirable to have much closer co-operation not just between Prime Minister and Chancellor but potentially between parliaments. I very much hope that the Minister might be able to say something about that relationship in his winding-up speech and to speak a little more generally about the extent to which the Government are thinking about strengthening inter-parliamentary relations, because a key aspect we need to think about in strengthening bilateral relations is people-to-people contacts at a variety of different levels. In 1997 and 1998, the new Labour Government understood that.
Here is my little bit of history: the new bilateralism was the term used by new Labour—I am not sure, but it may have been invented by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle—and was intended to be a step change in the UK’s relations with our European partners. It was on the basis of strengthening bilateral relations across parliaments: representatives of the Westminster Parliament would talk to their opposite numbers in other national capitals, Ministers would talk to their opposite numbers, and civil servants would strengthen relations. If one really wants strong bilateral relations, the perfect model is the Franco-German couple, which is deeply institutionalised and works even if the Chancellor of Germany and the President of France are not on the same page; the two countries look to work together. That heavily institutionalised relationship was sort of the model for the step change that the UK undertook in the first Blair Government, and it was initially very well received by our European partners.
Thanks to an underspend by the FCO, as it was then, I had some funding for a project at Chatham House looking at the UK’s bilateral relations. I interviewed colleagues in several European capitals, where there was an almost unanimous sense that “The UK understands Europe and how to work with us”—it was very positive. Just a few years later by 2006-07, if one went to European capitals, even in central and eastern Europe where previously they had said, “The UK is fantastic. It’s advocating for us to join the European Union—it’s a real supporter”, the sense was, “You can’t really trust the United Kingdom. It doesn’t understand reciprocity”. The term that had been used for the bilateral relations in the first Blair Government was promiscuous bilateralism—that you picked up a bilateral partner, you worked with them when you wanted something, and when you had what you wanted you did not keep that relationship going. Within a decade there was some disillusion; a sense that the UK maybe did not understand how to work with our European partners and did not understand reciprocity.
Clearly our bilateral relations are now outside the European Union, but the importance of that lesson remains. Therefore, could the Minister reassure the House in his response that, in the new relations we are seeking to build with Germany, France and Ireland, the Government understand the importance not just of the high-level agreements and the rhetoric at the start, but of ongoing relations? They are so important. By that I mean the person-to-person contact—that might be parliament to parliament or within political parties. The Liberal Democrats are still certainly part of the ALDE Party. I believe the Labour Party still has strong relations with the SPD. Whether its links are so strong with the PES I am not sure, but it would be useful to understand that.
Beyond that, will His Majesty’s Government think about how we can strengthen our relations more broadly—on defence, which I am sure several noble Lords will speak on having looked at the list of contributors, but also on culture and cultural co-operation? I know that my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter will speak on that. If the British Council has, as it does, priority countries in Europe—France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Germany—will the Government commit to ensuring that it is sufficiently resourced to be able to do its work effectively?
Finally, one of the key aspects of closer co-operation must surely be understanding among people, particularly the younger generations. Will the Government think again about youth mobility, as the leader of the Liberal Democrats asked the Prime Minister yesterday in the other place?
Red Sea Update
Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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The Earl of Minto (Con)
I thank my noble friend for that comment. I am sure that he will understand that there are certain things I cannot say. One of the points made about the RAF flying from Akrotiri is that it does seem to be quite a long way, but when you think that the Americans last weekend flew from the United States to carry out their attacks, it brings it into perspective. On the question of Sea Viper and the upgraded version of Sea Viper, on which, as I said earlier today, we are spending about £400 million, it is an extremely effective weapon. We are always looking at ways to broaden the range of weaponry based on any particular ship.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I join the comments of my noble friend Lord Coaker in supporting the action that the Government are taking, and also in supporting His Majesty’s Armed Forces on duty over there. Last month, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, designated the Houthis as a specially designated terrorist group. Will the Government take that back, look at it very carefully and, hopefully, decide to do the same thing?
The Earl of Minto (Con)
Your Lordships will be fully aware of the view that the Government take of these types of organisations. The noble Lord is correct: the US has designated the Houthis as a specially designated terrorist group. That is slightly different from full proscription. As he knows, we have taken out individual sanctions across quite a lot of people within the Houthi organisation. We are always looking at updating exactly what category these types of organisations come into. So it is being considered in real time.
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, on the question of rust, I imagine that the noble Viscount is talking about aircraft carriers. I am not certain that one should necessarily believe all the headlines that one reads, but it is certainly something that is being looked at. As I said earlier, we are very lucky that we have another one, so there will be no reduction in commitment or effort.
As to who is leading, this is a US-led coalition. Clearly, the US relies very heavily on its allies and each party, each country, is obviously providing a level it feels comfortable with, but it is definitely a US-led coalition.
The point about supply chains is extremely well made. This situation is potentially so damaging to the world’s trade—and it must be damaging the Chinese more than anyone, I would have thought—that there will definitely be countries and groups of countries that will look very carefully at where we could get bases from. Of course, we have a very successful base in Cyprus, and the Chinese are all over the east coast of Africa as we know, but the point is well made.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, the Statement says that we must cut off the Houthis’ financial resources. I absolutely agree with that point. It goes on to say that we have sanctioned four people, and prior to that, 11 people—that is 15 people—and two entities. That is great, but I suggest that we need to go much further, because we really have to make this hurt. As the noble Earl said, there will no one way of getting this situation resolved; there will be a number of prongs to deal with it, including sanctioning a much larger group of people and many more entities. I bet that if we look carefully, we will find that there are assets held in this country, and we need to deal with those as well. This is important; it really has to hurt.
The Earl of Minto (Con)
I entirely agree. Any way that one can starve any of these sorts of organisations with access to funds should be pursued with absolute vigour.
Parking (Code of Practice) Bill
Lord Kennedy of Southwark ExcerptsMonday 4th March 2019
(6 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019 View all Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 146-I Notice for Committee (PDF) - (25 Feb 2019)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral for bringing the Bill to this stage with his customary aplomb and expertise. It is not a flashy Bill but a necessary and welcome one, providing for uniformity and consistency in private parking practice. I also thank the honourable Member for East Yorkshire, Sir Greg Knight, for introducing the Bill and progressing it through the other place. I think the whole House—indeed, the whole country—should be grateful for this small but necessary measure.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, I join the Minister in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the honourable Member for East Yorkshire, Sir Greg Knight. I agree entirely with the comments that he has made.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson for their kind words. I pay tribute to Sir Greg Knight for his initiative in bringing forward a Bill that will be widely welcomed. The only additional congratulations that I would like to give are to the Bill team, the clerks and all those who have helped to give the Bill smooth passage through this place, as well as through the House of Commons. I beg to move.