Treaty of Lisbon (No. 5)

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). May I suggest to her a third reason for holding a referendum on the constitutional European Union (Amendment) Bill—that people much younger than me and perhaps just slightly younger than the hon. Lady have never had an opportunity to vote on these matters in this country? It is also a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot). Like him, I believe that the defence of the realm is the first priority of any Government, and I would like to pick up one of the themes about defence mentioned at the end of the excellent speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). The only real teeth offered by the Lisbon treaty concerning defence are the incorporation of the European Defence Agency—it was, of course, a key part of the European Union constitution—into that treaty. That is reinforced by the administrative measures being developed within the framework of the existing treaties, chipping away at the national interest provisions of the treaty of Rome while at the same time incrementally increasing the scope of procurement directives to cover more and more military expenditure. Thus, the main thrust of EU military integration is still being directed through the Monnet method, by which I mean slow and steady integration through economic means with the aim of Europeanising defence equipment. The idea is that the use of common equipment, allied to common foreign policy objectives from which common doctrines evolve, will eventually lead to European military forces being drawn together, resulting in due course in total integration. Also key to that integration process is the European rapid reaction force, which espouses among other things the doctrine of specialisation. The idea is that single nations, and especially smaller nations, need not provide balanced forces—that is, complete functioning formations—but simply components of a larger multinational force, thus fielding truly integrated European forces rather than national forces working together. The thinking behind that stealthy policy objective ensures that, while each member state has military components, only the European Union could actually field a complete, functioning military force. However, the grit in the oyster is Britain's insistence on maintaining its own balanced force which, at a certain level, is capable of carrying out self-sustaining operations in a multinational environment, thus defeating the object of integration. Furthermore, because the United Kingdom is fighting a real war alongside the Americans, it is driven by operational imperatives when it comes to the procurement of equipment, rather than by the notional, theoretical equipment profiles recommended in the headline goals specifying the equipment needed for the European rapid reaction force. After a round of spending in the last decade aimed at ““meshing in”” with the ERRF, and the last Prime Minister's European contribution within the St. Malo agreement, the United Kingdom is now diverging from, rather than converging with, EU military structures and ambitions, moving closer to United States forces as it becomes more deeply embedded in Afghan operations. Therefore, practically speaking, UK involvement in EU military integration is at its lowest ebb for some time. What the Lisbon treaty seeks to do is add to earlier treaties small steps of politically rather than operationally driven integration, but for the Commission that does not go far enough. The very first full-scale attempt at military integration within the European defence community took place in 1950, preceding the treaty of Rome. That inspired the first attempt at a European constitution to bind the European political community, and was set up to control the European army. The raison d'être of the European Union suddenly becomes very clear. Thus the main conclusion to be drawn is that the original ambitions of the integrationists are not satisfied by the treaty, and that they will have to come back for more. That puts us—and by ““us”” I mean the people on the opposite side of that argument—in the unsatisfactory position of warning about what can be dismissed as ifs, buts and maybes, rather than attacking hard, concrete proposals. It is all very woolly, nebulous and difficult to grasp: the typical nightmare for those of us who are fighting a project nine tenths of which—as with an iceberg—is hidden from sight.