NATO and the European Union

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Selsdon (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, because it brings to an end a most interesting period I have had of some six months of sitting through presentation after presentation, as a member of the House of Lords defence group, from the various parts of our Armed Forces. Over the years I have seen these presentations, but I have never been so impressed as I have been in the past six months. I believe that we might possibly end up with the best Armed Forces in the world.

The question is: what do we do with them and what is the bureaucracy that keeps us at bay? We have 22 member states of the EU and 22 members of NATO. It is quite interesting, however, that members of NATO are also members of the EU, so there is an interrelationship that I find quite interesting. The position that we are facing now is that we are a global nation, and perhaps one of the most global in the world, without actually realising it. We have had historic co-operation with our neighbours, but not within the Armed Forces area until recently.

I would like to draw your Lordships’ attention to the interesting position in which we find ourselves under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The territorial land area belonging to the United Kingdom extends outwards to 200 nautical miles and is known as the economic exclusion zone—the EEZ—and this also applies to overseas territories. Just for fun, I looked at the world’s EEZs of some 45 million square kilometres, and found that 60% of this area, or 26 million square kilometres, is represented by the EEZs of the United Kingdom together with those of the Commonwealth and the British Overseas Territories. Some 16% of the EEZ area is represented by France and its overseas territories. Thus, together with France, we have an interesting control of the waters of the world. These zones account for the area almost from heaven above to hell beneath. On the other side, 15% of the EEZ area belongs to the United States, and a further 10% to NATO. In our future thinking on our Armed Forces, therefore, we must look at the maritime sector very closely. The world shipping fleet includes 21,000 Commonwealth vessels. That is about the same as those of Japan, Greece, Germany, China, USA, Russia, Norway and the Netherlands combined. We are therefore, to some extent, a very great maritime nation.

When we come to our trade, one of the fascinating issues when regarding it—and I was on the Trade Board for many years—is that we have always had a deficit on manufactures and a surplus on services that has made up for that. That is because we do not make as many things as we used to, and our raw materials, in general, are sourced from abroad. This deficit on manufactures, therefore, is supplemented by a surplus on services. It means that we have played, and should continue to play, a global role.

This makes me look at the situation with France—and I declare an interest because I am technically a French peasant farmer, as I grow a small amount of wine in France and have been attacked by wild boars, the biggest one of which weighed 300 kilos. There is therefore a certain sensitivity and I have worked closely with French companies over many years. The relationship between the United Kingdom and France is particularly good at this time, and there is much more co-operation and going together in various territories.

I turn, inevitably, to Africa—that vast continent that has many problems—and to the “pays francophone” in Africa, which were very substantial providers of raw materials for France. We cannot look at the defence of the world or of the realm without looking at the requirement to solve the problems in some of these territories, particularly Africa, where migration has occurred, production has fallen and raw materials have been left in the ground. Therefore, if you go back to the past and look at the scramble for Africa and such, there should be a new scramble for these areas, where we, with the protection of our Armed Forces, could help to regenerate much of the production of the past.

In looking at some of the recent migration figures, and trying to determine how accurate they might be—on who came from where to go where for what reason—it seems strange that much of the migration comes from countries that were originally colonised because of their raw materials and the capabilities that they had for produce and products that were required in the western world. That still applies. However dreamy it may be, it would be nice to think that a review of all the production areas of central Africa and others today might be undertaken, and consideration given as to how some of the mines might be reopened or the agricultural production put in place by those immigrants that we have here.

It is a very interesting time for us, and I am very proud of my belief that we have, man for man, the best Armed Forces in the world.