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Defence in the World

The last two weeks have been a sad time for my constituency as a result of Government defence policy. In fact today is a sad day, because at midnight last night the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, which goes back to 1685, ceased to exist. We wish all the men well in their new incarnation in the Rifles. Of more impact have been the Government announcements of 17 January that the Metrix Consortium was the preferred bidder for the £16 billion defence training contract—one of the UK’s biggest private finance initiatives. It intends to relocate the Defence College for Communication and Information Systems, including the Royal School of Signals, from Blandford to St. Athan. That means that defence training will cease at Blandford around 2011, affecting some 60 per cent. of activity at Blandford camp. The news was a blow for Blandford and the wider community. The camp provides state of the art facilities for communication and information systems training, employs around 3,000 military staff, civilian staff and trainees, and supports a further 1,000 jobs in the local economy. The South West of England Regional Development Agency has estimated that the economic footprint of the camp is worth around £300 million a year to the local area. Thus any move is significant. I want to emphasise to the Minister that my main concern now is for the future of the camp after 2012. On 17 January I asked the Secretary of State to tell me whether the headquarters of the Royal Corps of Signals would remain at Blandford, and whether the Signal Officer in Chief would continue to be based at the camp. I would like confirmation in the wind-up that there is a firm commitment for Blandford to become the natural home of all Signals regiments when they are in the UK, with the technical support facilities that go with that role. As I mentioned earlier, the Ministry of Defence has spent £100 million on new facilities at Blandford over the past five years; it is definitely a centre of excellence and I want it to continue as the core of all Army communications and IT activity. The main focus of my remaining remarks will be on the relationship between the EU and NATO member states. I have been involved in that relationship as Chairman of the Defence Committee of the Western European Union—the inter-parliamentary European security and defence assembly. I want to destroy a few myths about European defence structures, which inevitably involve current EU military capability. Next month we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the treaty of Dunkirk—as Michael Caine would say, ““Not a lot of people know that.”” On 4 March 1947, France and the United Kingdom signed a mutual assistance pact, which was set in the post-war climate of friendship and co-operation and openly targeted at a vanquished Germany to forestall new aggression on its part. The French Government wanted to guard against what they considered a possible threat from across the Rhine. The United States made known its preference for a regional pact that went beyond mere military matters, and in March 1948 five countries—the UK, France and the Benelux countries—signed the Brussels treaty, establishing what was then called the Western European Union, designed to guard against any armed aggression in Europe, not just aggression from Germany, against its members. The treaty organised co-operation among the five signatories in military, economic, social and cultural spheres, and a collective military high command of combined chiefs of staffs was created. However, the Brussels treaty was left devoid of its newly expanded authority when a succession of other treaties was signed establishing the Council of Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community and, of course, NATO itself. In April 1949, 12 Foreign Ministers gathered in Washington to sign the NATO treaty, which incorporated the Western European Union. In 1955, after the failure of the European Defence Community, West Germany officially joined NATO, along with Greece and Turkey. At about the same time, the Brussels treaty was modified to create the successor WEU structure, which played an important role not only in integrating West Germany in the Atlantic alliance, but also in the restoration of confidence among western European countries and the settlement of the Saar problem. The WEU did not have much of a role in the early years, but by 1984 Ministers had recognised the continuing necessity of strengthening western security, and that better utilisation of the WEU would contribute not only to the security of western Europe but also to an important common defence for all countries of the Atlantic alliance. The commitment to build a European Union in accordance with the Single European Act was signed, which brought a much stronger role in defence matters. There were operational roles for the WEU in the Gulf, the Balkans and on the Danube. That situation continued until 2001 when those roles were transferred to the EU, with the military staff, the satellite centre and the western European armaments group. I stress that there is nothing new about the EU’s defence architecture, which under the provisions of the Maastricht treaty remains very much intergovernmental—a subject for co-operation between member states. That is the key point. As debates in the Bundestag authorising the recent German-led force in the Congo demonstrate, no soldier from a European state will be deployed in a conflict situation without the express approval of his national Government or Parliament. Any talk of a supranational European army deployed by Brussels is extremely premature. EU deployments of military force will continue to be made on an intergovernmental basis among willing nations, as is the case for NATO and the United Nations. When considering NATO-EU relations, it is fundamental to remember that 21 of the 26 NATO members are also members of the EU, so relations between the two organisations are, to a large extent, relations between the same set of countries. Obviously, the United States is a major player, but if there is to be enhanced political dialogue, it must be among equal nations. In a speech on Monday, the Secretary-General of NATO asked:"““Why are NATO-EU relations still so problematic?...My answer to these questions is clear and unambiguous. NATO-EU relations have not really arrived in the 21st century yet. They are still stuck in the ’90s.””" That is the problem, but we have to move on. Reform is needed if we are to create and maintain Euro-Atlantic co-operation. My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) mentioned the genuinely disappointing Riga summit. We have to create a strong European pillar of NATO, and although the European Union is there to provide a framework, that must be done within the context of the Atlantic alliance and the wider global security system. Where appropriate, there can be a common approach within the EU. We must encourage all member states to invest in the necessary military capability, and we must make sure that their policies will strengthen the north Atlantic alliance by making a credible and effective European contribution to it.