NATO Summit: Vilnius

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and NATO Summit 2023 in Vilnius.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I am very grateful for this debate, because it is important that the hard work that goes on across parties gets an airing in the House. To those watching our proceedings, I want to make the point that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly is a genuine, cross-party Assembly where party politics never comes into the discussion. People seek pragmatism. As leader of the United Kingdom delegation, I have the support of the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is the deputy leader. That will one day switch, because the Government have the leadership and the Opposition have the deputy leadership, but everybody works very closely together. I also say to those watching that it is a highly experienced delegation; it includes many former Defence Ministers, Ministers of State at the Foreign Office, Secretaries of State and, indeed, hon. and gallant Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney). There is a wide spread and a lot of experience.

I should start by saying what the NATO Parliamentary Assembly is. It was established in 1955 to bring about political accountability. Above all, we are the political body of the allies. We have political discussions about how NATO should move forward, just as we have discussions about defence—most people would envisage NATO as a defence body. Overall, we contribute to several key areas of NATO policy. For instance, the Parliamentary Assembly made a large contribution to the NATO 2030 strategy, which was adopted in Madrid last year.

I chair the Defence and Security Committee, in which allied nations discuss particular defence areas. There is also the Political Committee, the Science and Technology Committee, and the Economics and Security Committee—all important Committees that look at different issues, go to various countries and deal with partner nations as well as allies. They help to form the global image of which NATO needs to be aware. From there, we can feed into and build to summits, such as that one that will take place next week.

As I said, the Parliamentary Assembly is a political body. The importance of soft power cannot be overestimated. The public will often see the high-level dealings of parliamentarians, leaders of countries and Ministers, and that is what gets reported. The leaders have civil servants with them, and everything is pre-arranged. The Assembly has, by its very nature, the advantage that we are all Back Benchers. Those Back Benchers come from all 31 allies and partner nations. That often allows us to build relationships and get into discussions about things that it may be more difficult to discuss at a higher level. For example, I have been in conversations, as have other members, about Sweden’s and Finland’s accession and Türkiye’s concerns. We were able to discuss with our colleagues from Türkiye where the concerns lay.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Member agree that it was very important, post cold war, that the Assembly was able to bring in associate members from former eastern European countries, and build a political consensus in those countries to be part of the future accession to NATO?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point. He illustrates the political nature of the Assembly, which helped guide those newly formed democracies, as they were starting to flourish and develop in the early days, to ensure that they did not fall off the path to freedom, democracy, free speech and the other things that we recognise as key planks of NATO membership.

We are able to have conversations in the background with colleagues from other ally nations, can feed those back to our Governments, cross-party, and help move discussions forward. It should be recognised that the Swedes made enormous strides in addressing Türkiye’s concerns. The soft power at play in the background at committees should not be underestimated.

I am sure that most Assembly colleagues would agree that the transatlantic relationship remains strong; there is strong support for NATO on Capitol Hill, but our Capitol Hill colleagues tell us that they have to constantly inform and make representations to new colleagues about the importance of NATO and what it does. It would therefore be wrong to say to America deals with that in a bubble. It is important that we show the importance of the relationship between north America and the Canadians, who I will speak more widely about later. This is truly still a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The strength of the partnership has served us well for 75 years, and that cannot be overestimated.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. My right hon. Friend is making an extremely important point. Does he recognise that a live example is the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, through which the Administration is pursuing an “America first” agenda? The challenges of that for allied nations can be pointed out to members of Congress and Senate in the United States, so that they better understand why a partnership on supply chains and investment programmes matters. They can then challenge the Administration, so that a better position can be developed, and so that when the Government seek to make trade deals, they do not undermine those efforts.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

At the transatlantic forum, which many of us with leadership positions take part in—it takes place in December, at Washington’s National Defence University—American politicians saw for the first time, at first hand, the anger that had built across many European nations about the knock-on effects that the policy might have, not least the gaps that it could lead to in defence procurement and the development of technology. All Governments will often pursue an economic policy that fits with their national agenda, and not necessarily see the impacts elsewhere. The forum is another good example of soft power, because conversations can take place and can be fed back.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The underlying reality is that the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States is recognition that they, and the rest of the west, had allowed their industrial capacity to be hollowed out and basically subverted, particularly by China, and they are rebuilding their industry. There might be discussions to be had, but should we not also recognise that industry is vital, not only for our economy but for our security? It is time for us to catch up.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I agree with much of what the right hon. Gentleman said. That is a very good example of the fact that the Assembly is not afraid of being critical of Government policy. It is not afraid to be critical of Governments of any colour. The committees have been in the building for a long time.

I was about to come to the reports produced. A report produced by Defence and Security Committee is about ensuring an industrial base for the manufacture of defence equipment and munitions. I do not think it is a state secret any more, particularly as it got leaked on the internet by somebody in America, that there is real concern about the ability to rearm. The right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) touched on the fact that industry has not created a constant supply line. My committee recognised that we must have that constant supply line, and industry must have the confidence to invest; I suspect that the Economics and Security Committee recognised the same. That is a good example of the work that has been done, and fed to leaders in advance of discussions that they must have at the Vilnius summit.

As we are all aware, we are involved in a war. It is not a war with NATO, but allies are supporting Ukraine, and doing everything we can to let it stand up for freedom and democracy, and to let the Ukrainian people choose how they live their life and who runs them. It is an important fight; it is the fight of democracy against autocracy and dictatorship. It has, however, posed real challenges. The Assembly is not afraid to highlight those challenges and ensure they are fed into discussions.

Reports become the body of the work of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. One issue reported on was the rapid evolution of Baltic security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has led to another very important political point. Everybody recognises article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, which says that an attack on one is an attack on all, but it has become apparent to many—this is being discussed in our Committees—that article 5 is not an emergency call. It is not a 999 call, or a 911 call, for those in America. It is about re-enforcement—the rapid reaction force, which takes three weeks to get there.

Article 3 says that a country must be able to defend itself first. That is why countries have moved forward with a forward defence presence; for example, there is the joint expeditionary force in the Baltic sea, and the 300,000 troops being lined up along the border, so that the tripwire is not tripped. That is a fundamental difference, because until the invasion of Crimea, NATO had shifted its perspective; it went from being a cold war defence organisation to being a political organisation. It was doing exceptionally important work, as the right hon. Member for North Durham pointed out, as countries from eastern Europe joined the path of democracy. After the invasion of Crimea, there was a switch to both roles being important. It is a tribute to NATO and its leadership that it was able to adapt to the change in geopolitical circumstances so quickly.

It is not just Members of the House of Commons who are members of the Assembly; five Members from the other place also make a great deal of effort. Lord Lancaster from the other place, who is on my Committee, had his report, “Troubled waters—how Russia’s war in Ukraine changes Black sea security”, published. Security in the Black sea region has changed immensely.

I will take this opportunity to thank our allies in Türkiye for their incredible work; sometimes they do not get the credit they deserve. They are looked at in different ways. They enforced the Montreux treaty, which has stopped huge amounts of Russian maritime capital equipment making its way into the Black sea and creating an issue. They negotiated the export of grain; they are constantly patrolling the Black sea to defuse sea mines that have become dislodged; and they are very much protecting that area. Indeed, there are a lot of NATO allies around the Black sea, and they are in a tough region, as we can see from looking at their geographical neighbours. It shows the strength of the NATO alliance that we have countries from so many different parts of the world carrying out very specific roles.

I turn to the work of the Defence and Security Committee. When I took on the chairmanship, I wanted to look at maritime security. The High North is coming ever more to the fore. We recently conducted a visit to Canada, which was very much based around its naval training, because Canada is surrounded by three oceans yet has not invested in its maritime capability in the way that we would. Its Halifax-class frigates are slightly different from ours, and are being refurbed at 30 years old; that is the same age as our Type 23s, which we are retiring, yet they are being refurbed to take another 20 years at sea. There are interesting comparisons to be draw in the alliance when it comes to procurement. We might consider what we are doing with the Royal Navy, and the modernisation and the technology that can be brought forward in the realm of the NATO maritime alliance.

Russia may not be able to control the oceans in the way that the Americans can, but it is exceptionally good in the arena that it operates in. That arena is increasingly becoming the High North, for them and for the Chinese, who are mapping the area, working out where they can push up and where they can exploit, and where the mineral resources lie. They are also investing heavily.

The Assembly has been able to identify and bring more to the fore the problems the Canadians face, not least permafrost. Permafrost is retreating in the High North, which is destroying military infrastructure, such as runways that have been relied on up to this time. NORAD—the North American Aerospace Defence Command—needs updating, and there are fuel supply depots that are not being used. We talk about the UK’s procurement struggles; we need to recognise that many allies have similar struggles. That again shows the strength of the alliance: we can come together to face what will become an ever-greater threat.

Russia has recognised that it needs to shift the ball, and there is an interesting conversation about the capability of its intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles and whether it would use them. We have the policy of counterbalance, but it now has developed the Poseidon torpedo, which could by all accounts make its way underwater for six days to the coast of North America, explode a mile offshore with a nuclear warhead and create a tsunami. That changes the counterbalance, which is why, again, this alliance is so important. It is also why it is so important that the UK renews Trident and the Dreadnought fleet, to make sure that counterbalance exists. That way, even if we do not know where the silos are, we know that there would be a response, and that would reduce the threat. If the Russians want to go down that road, let them, but they still have not got a free pass to do that, because we have the counterbalance.

More positively, NATO works on interoperability, and F-35s from the UK have been landing on Italian carriers. Such steps send out important messages to our foes—to the Russians, and to the Chinese in many ways—that NATO is not just a gathering of 31 countries with their own military equipment; it is building its interoperability. The interoperability offered by the F-35 marks a fundamental change in air support in the alliance.

I will conclude, to allow colleagues to contribute. As we approach the 75th anniversary of NATO, and talk here before the Vilnius summit, I think everyone in this Room would agree that NATO is more important than at any time. Only through these alliances and partnerships will we bring about the counterbalance needed to ensure that we can carry on living in freedom and democracy, which the people of Ukraine are fighting for with their life as we speak.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Sharma; what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) on securing the debate. May I also say a big thank you to the Members of both Houses who serve on the UK NATO Parliamentary Assembly delegation? As the right hon. Gentleman said, I am the deputy leader of the delegation, and next year NATO will be 75 years of age. It was set up in the dark days after the second world war, with the inspiring leadership in the UK of individuals such as Ernie Bevin coming together to ensure that the horrors that faced us for two generations would never again be visited on Europe. Its fundamental aim was to protect the new rules-based order, democracy and the way of life that we have often come to take for granted.

In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower said:

“We do not keep security establishments merely to defend property or territory or rights abroad or at sea. We keep the security forces to defend a way of life.”

That is as relevant today as it was in 1954. The unprovoked Russian attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine has brought that to stark attention. Some of the threats that we face are the same, with war sadly returning to the European mainland, but there are also new challenges that were not there 75 years ago, such as cyber, disinformation and new technological developments, which we need to keep ahead of to protect the way of life and democracy that the NATO nations strive to defend. Some people say that NATO is an aggressive alliance. It is not; it is a defensive alliance to protect the values that I have just outlined.

I have been a member of the Assembly since 2017. I am currently also a vice-president, and until recently chaired its Science and Technology Committee. I will attend the summit in Vilnius next week on behalf of the NATO Assembly in my position as one of its vice-presidents. What does NATO face today? Clearly, there is the current threat from Russia in Ukraine, and the defence of the democratic values that I outlined. We need to reiterate our support for Ukraine next week in terms of ensuring success in defeating the unwarranted invasion of a sovereign European nation, and we must focus, as the right hon. Gentleman said, on refreshing our own defence settlements, including the accession of new nations, and ensuring that we not only get security guarantees for Ukraine but have a pathway to it becoming part of NATO.

Next week will be difficult, as it always is, in terms of not only ensuring that we reiterate the arguments for why NATO is important, but, importantly, ensuring that its defence and deterrence capabilities are renewed, to deter those who wish to do us harm. I am very disappointed that we have not had the Command Paper from the UK Government prior to the NATO summit. It seems strange that we will make various commitments next week in Vilnius but will then have a Command Paper that, I am told, will be out towards the end of the month.

There are two aspects next week in Vilnius that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly agreed at its spring session in Luxembourg. The first is a united resolution to continue to support the people and Government of Ukraine, and to make sure that we have more integration between NATO, the EU and NATO partner nations on providing the political, military intelligence, financial, training and humanitarian support for Ukraine to prevail and restore the territorial integrity it needs. It is also about how we up the ante and make sure that the military equipment the Ukrainians require is speedily delivered to them.

The other resolution that we passed and sent to the conference was about the Wagner Group—which has been in the headlines in the past few weeks—highlighting that that is a terrorist and criminal organisation. We also need to look at how we can get more integration, and not just in Europe, because the threats are now wider. How do we respond to China, for example?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I notice that we have a Foreign Office Minister with us today. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the recalcitrance of the Foreign Office about proscribing the Wagner Group is disappointing?

[Mr Jones]

I do. The right hon. Gentleman and I went to the Foreign Office last year, and we know well the lack of interest there in the NATO PA, which is a marked contrast with every other nation represented there.

Another important resolution we have next week follows a commitment by Congressman Gerry Connolly when he was President of the NATO PA. It is about reinforcing the idea that NATO is there to protect democracy and the rules-based order. His suggestion, which was adopted last year, was that we should have a unit within NATO to make sure not only that we talk about democratic values and the rules-based order, but that we can promote them throughout our nations, similar to the way we did that during the cold war. That will be important.

For people who do not understand the Parliamentary Assembly, we have a direct say about what NATO does. I chaired the Science and Technology Committee for four years, and we have a very good relationship with the NATO chief scientist, Dr Bryan Wells, who has taken on board some issues and the reports we did on hypersonics and new technologies, and on ensuring that we can get some of the new technologies distributed across NATO. The Parliamentary Assembly is a valuable forum, because it makes the case for NATO, as well as bringing together parliamentarians from across NATO. As I said, post the cold war, when the Berlin wall came down, the PA was vital for building important relationships between parliamentarians from the former eastern European bloc, so that they could work on their accession strategy for NATO membership, and this was about underpinning the importance of democracy.

I look forward to taking part in the NATO summit in Vilnius next week and being, as we all are on the Parliamentary Assembly, the political and democratic voice of NATO. I think we need to argue more and more for why NATO is important, because it went into abeyance after the cold war. It has now been brought into sharp focus because of what has happened in Ukraine and it is in the public’s consciousness. NATO is not just a military alliance; it is underpinned by democracy. Having parliamentarians as part of that process is an important way of showing that it is a democratic organisation that not only has, at times, difficult discussions but promotes the rules-based order and democracy, against the alternatives of those who would not only do us harm but destroy the system that we have grown to love over the last 70 years.

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[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. As we are dealing with defence matters, it is worth noting that your predecessor was the last serving member of the British Army to have served in this House.

I congratulate the leader of our delegation, the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), on securing this debate. It has highlighted once again that, whereas in the popular mindset NATO is seen as a military alliance, it is fundamentally very much a political alliance, and was right at the beginning. It was created in response to political events.

When one reads Ernie Bevin’s justification for NATO, it is interesting to see that he stresses the extent to which they tried to secure political agreement with the Soviets for the management of Europe after the second world war, not just in Germany, Berlin or Austria, but across Europe. They were perpetually frustrated and eventually understood, particularly after all the political and military coups that took place across eastern Europe, that they needed collective security against the threat, and that they needed not only a military, but a political organisation. It is right that the Foreign Office leads the debate, because it leads in NATO. That, again, demonstrates the fundamentally political nature of the alliance. It is, of course, backed up by hard power and our nuclear deterrent, but it is underpinned by industrial and societal issues.

I have always taken an interest in manufacturing and defence industry matters—probably because of my previous incarnation as a national officer in a major industrial union—and, interestingly, that is now very much a mainstream debate inside the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and in the various capitals of NATO countries. There is a real role for Parliaments to get engaged, as hon. Members have mentioned. Countries will be looking at rebuilding their own industrial capacity but, even within the United States, there is recognition that no one country can do that alone.

Diversity of supply from secure and trusted suppliers is enormously important. That is true about fundamental materials—even this week, countries were finding China cutting off various materials to chip makers—but it runs right the way through. Sometimes, among the less well informed, the debate has focused on the high end, such as computer chips, but basic, fundamental industrial capacity in the form of foundries and drop forging is enormously important in maintaining capacity. The struggle in Ukraine has highlighted that importance.

There is a lot of catching up to do. Our Government are doing some of it but, to my mind, they are still being so slow. There is no point in criticising Joe Biden and the Administration in Washington for rebuilding their industrial capacity. We should work with them, and we should also work across Europe. There is a regrettable tendency within the EU bureaucracy to try to make this an exclusive EU function, more as a political operation than a defence and industrial one. It is hugely important that the UK, the EU, and the United States and Canada look at how we can best co-operate to ensure that we can supply our troops not only in normal times, but in times of crisis and emergency.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this mindset has to be present across all Departments and all Governments at the top? There is a reason why we need warehouses full of billions of pounds’ worth of equipment, and it is not just, “Let’s get that off the accounting books.” What has been shown is just how vital it is.

[John Spellar]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is also about industrial capacity to replace that equipment. There are some real debates to be had about the associated costs and capacity, but that is much better done with proper understanding of specialisations. That should also involve our friends in Australia through the AUKUS agreement, which will be important for the UK and the role we can play with our European colleagues.

There is also the battle for hearts and minds inside Europe, which goes right the way back to the founding of NATO. Sometimes there is a misplaced focus on technology. People talk about being able to use Facebook and various parts of social media. Those skills are important, but, as Rupert Murdoch said about the entertainment industry, in the end, content is king. That is the important thing. That is where we very much need to sharpen our act, or rather recreate the capacities that we used to have. After all, in the second world war we had the Political Warfare Executive, which was probably one of the most outstanding information and disinformation operations. We seem to have moved backwards from that.

We are up against an opponent for whom politics is everything. In both Russia and China, Lenin still rules OK. Politics absolutely dominates the scene. That is where the NATO PA comes in, because we are able to bring the democratic arguments. Congressman Gerry Connolly’s work on putting the defence and advancement of democracy right at the heart of NATO was rightly referenced, but we also have to develop those capacities.

Both the EU and NATO have done some work on disinformation, but we have to up our game. We have to rediscover that. We have to create the mechanisms in Government that can co-operate with other countries in NATO, and with representatives in the NATO PA, in order to take the fight to authoritarians or their fellow travellers across the world, not to prevent the battle of machines but to win the battle of the hearts and minds. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly has a crucial role to play in that.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. I am extremely grateful that we were able to show the work of the NATO PA. Anybody who is observing our proceedings can see all the reports on NATO-PA.int, because we are a completely open body with open source material. The reports that we produce go on to form important lessons. It is important that the public recognise the work that goes on constantly at a political level to support and defend democracy and freedom.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and NATO Summit 2023 in Vilnius.