NATO and the European Union

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, want to thank the noble Lord for initiating this debate and for his introduction, which as usual was an excellent lesson in history. I welcome much of the new national security strategy, with chapter 5 setting out how the Government will use diplomats, development assistance, the Armed Forces, the security and intelligence agencies, law enforcement and soft power to protect and promote our interests and values. If we are to have the international security and stability that we seek, development, defence and diplomacy have to go together.

The SDSR needs to demonstrate a joined-up, whole-government approach. Of course, this is also recognised in the new policy statement, UK Aid: Tackling Global Challenges in the National Interest. My noble friend Lord McConnell referred to that statement in the debate last week, and welcomed the new £1 billion fund for conflict stability and security. However, as he remarked, the strategies for these new funds are far from clear. Although he failed to get an answer from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, I hope the Minister will respond today to my noble friend’s request that the Government consider allocating time in the new year for a debate on the strategies behind these two critical new commitments.

The Government’s commitment on defence spending and to the 0.7% for development spending is also welcome, but cutting back on diplomatic analysis and research strength may in the long run cost us more. Better understanding foreign societies at risk of instability and improving the UK’s ability to respond intelligently and appropriately to international crises are vital, as the Ukraine crisis taught us. The UK now spends less per head on diplomacy than the US, Germany, France, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

To multiply what we can achieve alone, the Government talk of investing more in our relationships with our traditional allies and partners and building stronger partnerships around the world. Since we joined the European Union many years ago, British foreign policy has had two key pillars. The first is exercising a leading role in Europe and the second is being the principal ally of the United States. As President Obama made clear, leaving the EU would have an impact on not just one but both of those pillars.

Unfortunately, the strategy section on the European Union is weak, failing to mention the potential of the External Action Service and the Development Commission to build stability in the world. One Eurosceptic myth often repeated is that we were never told when we joined the European Community that it had implications for foreign policy and that it was just a common market for trade. In the debates we have had on the EU Referendum Bill we have heard from the Eurosceptic side of the Conservative Party about the sort of future relationship they would like us to have with the European Union and its leading member states.

One model we heard about was, of course, Norway’s, although the Prime Minister now appears to have decided against that. Whatever model is considered, to turn away from our closest neighbours in the rest of Europe who share our democratic values hardly seems credible when determining what our place and role in the world should be. As the strategy points out, Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and the destabilising activities in Ukraine directly challenge European security and the rules-based international order. In challenging Russia over Ukraine, the European members of NATO have worked closely together, imposing EU sanctions to parallel those NATO measures.

Of course, as the strategy states, we need to keep open the possibility of co-operation, seeking to engage with Russia on global security, including international efforts to tackle the ISIL threat and building on the successful co-operation that we shared in negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme. But one of the difficulties that we have in assessing the long-term sustainability of the review is that we have yet to conclude what future relationship we wish to have with our nearest neighbours. As recent tragic events have taught us, the threats—as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said—that we face as a nation today, such as international terrorism, migration and cross-border crime are all shared with our closest neighbours. Key to this debate is understanding that Britain shares values and interests with our European neighbours, and that any coherent British foreign and security strategy has to be founded on that European strategy.