Oral evidence

Taken before the Defence Committee on Wednesday 15 October 2003

Members present:

Mr Bruce George, in the Chair

Mr James Cran

Mr David Crausby

Mr Mike Hancock

Mr Gerald Howarth

Mr Kevan Jones

Mr Frank Roy

Rachel Squire

__________

Memorandum submitted by Ministry of Defence

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: MR SIMON WEBB CBE, Policy Director, Ministry of Defence, DR SARAH BEAVER, Director for EU and UN, Ministry of Defence and MR PAUL JOHNSTON, Head of Security Policy Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, examined.

 

Q1  Chairman: Mr Webb and colleagues, I am sorry for the slight delay in having you in. Welcome. We will try to finish at five o'clock, which will impose obligations on questioners. I will start off with a long first question. Colleagues, the first question is that we received the Food for Thought paper prepared in late August. It appears the Government's main concern is that constitutional changes should promote the development of capabilities but the IGC is focussed on reaching agreement on a new Treaty - not directly on developing capabilities. What specific institutional provisions in the Treaty will act as an incentive to Member States to develop their military capabilities?

Mr Webb: Thank you, Chairman. Perhaps I could introduce my colleagues. On my left is Dr Sarah Beaver, who is the director for the EU and the UN in the Ministry of Defence and on my right Mr Paul Johnston is the head of Security Policy Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. You are quite right, Chairman, that we have approached the Convention and now the IGC very much with an eye to capabilities and there is one part of it where the UK has actually been pretty pro-active in looking to make some progress and this is in relation to the agency. I use that word because there are various titles around but as in Prusella Stuart's original submission to the Convention of last autumn it was very much described at that stage as a defence capability development agency. I think this reflected some discussion, particularly in London, that we needed a stronger mechanism to ginger and encourage the development of capabilities in ESDP and that although some of the existing mechanisms that we have been working with for the last few words have had their place we needed something a bit more permanent and with a strong political dimension to it. So we have been very much promoters of the agency to that extent and in fact we are pretty much happy with the clause in the Treaty about this. I am afraid we are going to spend a lot of time this afternoon referring to particular clause numbers. The best exposition of it is in Article III - 212, if you have that available to you.

 

Q2  Chairman: Yes, we have got that. Have you had any success in persuading them to make any amendments which might lead to a greater focus on capabilities?

Mr Webb: We have, Chairman. We are actually happy with the general thrust of Article III - 212 in terms of the coverage of capabilities and what it purports to do. The only thing we were less comfortable with, oddly enough, is the title but help was at hand because at the Thessaloniki council this spring a different title was proposed. The same idea was promoted but with a different title. At Thessaloniki they talked about an inter-governmental agency in the field of defence capabilities development, research, acquisition and armaments. So that put capabilities at the front of the title, which is very much how we see it. We see the issue as being to develop capabilities within ESDP and that research and acquisition and the armaments issue are in support of that. So we have been doing well with this debate and actually on the internal paperwork, which currently we are working on very hard, about setting up the agency the Thessaloniki title is in there. So I think this has been a useful step forward and we are pretty confident that we will get this agency up and running, possibly even ahead of the Treaty.

 

Q3  Chairman: It looks like a bit of a sop to me, Mr Webb, just to keep the Brits happy. Throw them a few sprats and they might not be so worry about the content as laid out?

Mr Webb: No, not at all. It cannot be a sprat since we proposed it.

Mr Howarth: That is a non sequitur, Mr Webb.

 

Q4  Chairman: I am not entirely convinced by your own satisfaction.

Mr Webb: We have been working very hard on this. Myself an Dr Beaver were at a gathering last week, there was another one yesterday, there is another one at the end of this month and we are trying at the moment to see if we can get a decision out of the Italian president. I think that is a bit optimistic but that is the sort of pace we are going at. We are very specifically talking about an organisation which would actually get into the business of identifying capability objectives, evaluating and observing the ability of capability commitments. That takes you into the area of assessment, evaluation and in other more detailed paperwork scrutiny. So we are looking towards something which is actually saying, what objectively is the capacity of the ESDP and then to move on from there to look at the tasks that the organisation is trying to undertake and from there into operational needs, harmonisational requirements and then projects. So we are absolutely determined to try and make progress in this area and I think it would be fair to say we have had a very good consensus on this. I think there is a consensus running at 25 on this subject. There are some structural points. I mean, people have views about structural issues, which is why we have so many meetings to deal with it, but we are nonetheless making good progress. So this is a part of the treaty that I think we can very warmly welcome and I would really commend it to the Committee, perhaps with a change of title.

 

Q5  Chairman: NATO has been trying for years to get some of our colleagues to do rather more and that has failed miserably. Do you honestly think the promise of an agency or a change of wording is going to generate greater commitment to their own defence and to collective defence than hitherto has been achieved?

Mr Webb: This may be a slightly controversial remark and we in Defence are a bit new to the EU but I think it is fair to say the EU has developed a lot through its institutions and institutions, particularly when you get a good political dynamic in them, can actually have an effect on the development of the Union. So I think we do see it actually as a step forward. That would not work in NATO; NATO is a very differently structured organisation. I might say that we work just as hard on pushing capabilities in the NATO arena, particularly now in the context of the NATO Response Force and in looking at new ways of exploiting allied command transformation. So there is a lot going on on that scene too. But in terms of the EU, I think the agency could be the sort of prod for further activities that the EU needs but in EU terms. It is a different type of structure.

 

Q6  Chairman: Are the capabilities that the EU will need to acquire to carry out a crisis management operation compatible with those sought by NATO to carry out higher intensity war fighting operations through, as you mentioned, the NATO Response Force or are we really asking Member States to spend on a diverse range of capabilities which they probably would be reluctant to do?

Mr Webb: It is a very good point and we obviously want to have harmonization and it has always been a British cry to avoid duplication. How we do that is through something called the capability development mechanism. At the same time as we agreed the Berlin Plus arrangements, just in parallel with that, we produced a document which actually links the NATO and the EU capability planning systems in a coherent way and in particular promotes complete transparency and there is actually a working group which meets regularly to have a look at that. That has had some useful progress already and in particular I would just like to mention two areas where I think things have been going well. One is on air lift and another is on air to air refuelling. I do not need to explain to this Committee the importance of both of those. In those cases it turned out that there was something in the Prague capability commitments conference about both of those and within ESDP there were European Capability Action Plan panels working on both of those, which have become projects. Correct me if I am wrong but I think we have now managed to pretty much get those two things to come together and indeed on one of them we surrendered our chair to the Germans so that they could chair both and make sure you got that coherence. So actually things are going reasonably well in that direction. None of this produces instant money but you may have noticed that last week, for example, when we were all in Colorado Springs for the NATO meeting there were actually further commitments made on the air to air refuelling side by a range of countries. So it is not an instant solution but I think we have got the basic geography heading in the right direction.

 

Q7  Mr Howarth: Is the harmonization on the air to air refuelling going to be reflected in the Government's position on the two competing bids which are before your department at the moment, Mr Webb?

Mr Webb: Do you know, I cannot see that on the agenda this afternoon, Chairman, but perhaps I have missed something!

 

Q8  Mr Howarth: The point I am making is that if we are talking about capabilities, about non-duplication of harmonization, here you are faced with an imminent decision on two proposals. How is all this new structure feeding through to ensure that when we take that decision others maybe will follow suit and follow our decision? Are we being influenced by their thoughts?

Mr Webb: Not in terms of the specific competition. I have to say I am not an expert on that end of it. But one thing is sure, which is that if we can harmonize the requirements and we can harmonize the timescales either through the NATO defence planning process or through the EU headline goal but now we think reinforced by the agency that gives you the chance of having a bigger market and of allowing more sensible acquisition decisions which can exploit the bigger scale of purchase to mutual benefit. So that is certainly, I think, a longer term possibility. I cannot comment on the relevance of that to this particular project immediately in front of us but in the longer term I think it is definitely the right way to go.

 

Q9  Mr Cran: Mr Webb, it seems to me, having read what was said to the House Of Lords Committee last week, the Government's vision for the ESDP is all about crisis management outside the European Union but it seems equally clear to me - maybe you disagree - that other states of the European Union have very a different view about this whole scenario, have a much broader view of what it should be and what it should encompass. Is that something you agree with and without going into too much of a panegyric could you tell us if I am correct in my analysis? Which are the countries which are looking for something very much broader than we are?

Mr Webb: I think the way I come at this is to say that we have always been pretty clear that we see the principal role of ESDP being in relation to crisis management in the Petersburg tasks. You will see that actually there is a proposal in the Treaty to expand the Petersburg tasks and I will talk about that a bit later, but that is where we see the responsibilities of ESDP being concentrated. That has been a consistent British line under successive governments for many years. We have been very careful - and you will have seen us repeat that on numerous occasions - not to try to take over roles that we feel are best fulfilled by NATO. Perhaps this point needs to be made in general. There is negotiation going on about this Treaty and defence is only one part of it, but subject to that caveat I think it is clear and the Government is clear in its own White Paper about what our position is on that. Of course you get people who have other ideas but that is not new either, so I do not see there is any great change of position in front of us here. There is one clause in here which you will have seen, which is clause 47, which proposes something which goes a bit further than that and where I think our reservations have been made clear already.

 

Q10  Mr Cran: So the answer to the second part of my question would be that I was actually wrong in saying that some other members of the European Union had a very much broader view?

Mr Webb: No. I was confirming that. There certainly are.

 

Q11  Mr Cran: Could you just expand on that? Are we talking about the French, the Greek?

Mr Webb: I do not think it is helpful in negotiation to identify other people.

 

Q12  Mr Cran: You are not negotiating with me. I am just a seeker after knowledge. All I am asking is what are the other key players about?

Mr Webb: If you look at clause 47 you will see that there is a proposal which obviously came from somewhere -

Mr Cran: But you are not prepared to tell us where?

 

Q13  Chairman: You are being very challenged now. Your diplomatic skills are letting you down miserably. It is a very simple question. If you do not give the names give the approximate numbers with a plus or minus three. Are we going to be on our own?

Mr Webb: No.

 

Q14  Chairman: Is some of the nonsense contained within the documentation going to be implemented in toto? Are we going to have some concessions thrown to us? Just putting it slightly differently, are there other people in the European Union who do not want to see some of the kind of stuff which is before us at the present stage?

Mr Webb: Let me just say I believe there to be a substantial majority of countries within the European Union who share our view.

Chairman: I can sleep well in my bed tonight knowing, Mr Webb, that you have said that. We will come back to that later.

Mr Cran: Could I at least know who they are?

Chairman: I will tell you afterwards. Mr Webb is not going to name names, that is pretty obvious, but he has said a substantial majority, which is pretty reassuring.

Mr Cran: It depends who is in the substantial majority of course, Chairman, does it not?

Chairman: He is not going to tell us.

 

Q15  Mr Cran: All right, even though you are not going to say that, just for the ordinary citizen, of which of course I count myself to be just one, and just so that they can understand and so can I, how does the concept that we are talking about fit within the context of what the Prime Minister said in the preface to the White Paper published in September when he said: "The Government could only accept a final text that made it clear that issues like defence remain the province of the nation state"? So that the citizen can understand what we are talking about, how do the two propositions sit together?

Mr Webb: That is, if I may say so, on a different point.

 

Q16  Mr Cran: But I am entitled to make the point.

Mr Webb: Yes, of course. I was just going to explain why. The feature of the Treaty is that it preserves the inter-governmental nature of the Common Foreign and Security Policy and within that European Security and Defence Policy. One could construct an EU in which the sort of role played by, for example, the European Commission of a different type of constitutional structure could apply and I think one of the reasons why the Government has overall found a great deal of this Treaty very attractive is because it does preserve precisely that point, the inter-governmental nature of the Foreign Security and Defence Policy arena. So I think that is what the Prime Minister was referring to in that respect. It is a slightly different point to what the roles of ESDP should be.

 

Q17  Mr Cran: Going back to the point I asked you about the different visions - and at least we got out of you that there are different visions, albeit that we might get agreement at the end of the day - do you think that denying these unnamed countries the vision that they have in front of them will in fact loosen their commitment to the whole principle we are talking about and indeed to improving European capabilities, defence capabilities?

Mr Webb: No. In fact some of the strongest proponents for expansion are also some of the strongest performers both on capabilities and on operations.

 

Q18  Mr Cran: We must place that remark against what happens so maybe on a future occasion we can compare what you said with what happens. The last thing I want to ask is, has the Government's views on ESDP in any way been influenced by the fighting in Iraq? I simply ask that question because, as you yourself said, the original Petersburg tasks are being added to in terms of a number of things but post-conflict stabilisation is one of them. Did the one lead to the other or not?

Mr Webb: No, not specifically because I think actually the proposal to expand the Petersburg tasks was actually made last autumn, in November 2002, but the mindset point is similar. Let me put it in this sense. We have found ourselves in the international community (whether you are talking about NATO, ad hoc coalitions or the ESDP operation, all of which occurred in the last three or four years) very often facing this issue, that a military intervention, particularly into a state which has in some sense failed, leaves a question about post-conflict stabilisation. So we have been very happy - we were associated with the drafting of this - to see stabilisation included just to make it clear that that was a valid role. Actually, I think it is role where the EU has a lot to offer because, if I may put it like this, the civil instruments are nearer to you than they are in NATO. There is a very big EU machine which has a big aid budget, which has lots of expertise in things like courts, schools, borders, economic regeneration and all that kind of thing and it is very close on hand. So I think one of the attractive features about ESDP and something we certainly proselytize for within the EU is to sort of bring together the civil and military instruments together, which of course we are quite used to doing in British practice, though not perfect, in ways which exploit the EU's strengths. So that is a long way of saying it was not specifically about Iraq but Iraq is a good example of the sort of situation which it would be helpful for.

 

Q19  Mr Hancock: Hang on, Mr Webb, does that not actually make it potentially more difficult to get a military solution into play in an EU scenario where the competing pressures to go down other routes would be far too compelling for anyone to really want to settle on a military solution to an issue easily?

Mr Webb: That cuts both ways, does it not? It might be right not to have a military solution.

 

Q20  Mr Hancock: It is more important if it is going to go that route, is it not? It is going to be very difficult to get a coordinated military solution because the competing elements within the sort of framework you describe would always be against that happening?

Mr Webb: No. Strictly speaking, and that is preserved in the new structure, although I said the civil instruments were close - I mean, they are geographically close, in the same building or on the same roundabout in Brussels - they are under separate decision making. So the military operation is under the control of the political and security committee and obviously aid instruments and a lot of the other things are under the control of currently different pillars of the EU. So at the moment, and to some extent it is preserved in the new Treaty, they are under separate decision making so it is not possible, if you like, for the civil bit to interrupt the decision making on the political security part. Judging by the pace of the decision making on the Bunia operation, which was the first autonomous operation undertaken by the EU this summer, the French lead, the political decision making on that was very snappy, there was no doubt about it so I did not have that sense.

 

Q21  Mr Jones: Mr Webb, could I now turn in relation to the US. Two points first of all before I ask a question. The US Ambassador to NATO on 30 September said that what our European allies really need are greater military capabilities, not more office headquarters but without troops and without capability. We were in Washington about three weeks ago and we also picked up from I think some quite senior people both in the Pentagon and the State Department certainly a reference to France, Belgium and Luxembourg. I think they called them "chocolatiers". What do you think the US view is of proposals other than ESDP at the moment? Has it changed over the last twelve months or so, certainly in the light of France, Belgium and Luxembourg?

Mr Webb: I cannot improve on what my colleague said last week, which is that there have been some "anxieties and concerns" about the 29 April mini-summit, which I think are reflected in the quote you have just made, particularly I think from the NATO end where some of us have been working quite hard to reduce the number of NATO headquarters from 20 to 11.

 

Q22  Mr Jones: Just on that point, I think it was also reported a few weeks ago that possibly the Prime Minister's position on this has changed somewhat. What is your view on that?

Mr Webb: You know I am going to say I cannot improve on what the Prime Minister's official spokesman has said since I noticed that the House missed the opportunity to ask him personally at lunchtime.

 

Q23  Mr Jones: It is your opportunity, Mr Webb, to tell us clearly.

Mr Webb: Yes. Thank you very much. After the occasion you have referred to - which was an informal meeting, I think it is important to say - the Prime Minister's spokesman said: "It is important to recognise our position on the fundamental point relating to the separate operational and planning HQ as proposed by the Tervuren group" - which is the 29 April thing we have been talking about - "remained unchanged. We did not think it was the way forward."

 

Q24  Chairman: What date was that?

Mr Webb: That is the press briefing on Monday, 22 September after the Berlin meeting.

Chairman: That is a fortnight ago.

 

Q25  Mr Jones: Is that the MoD's position?

Mr Webb: Of course.

 

Q26  Mr Jones: Just in terms of the clear anxiety that we picked up on this, because clearly the Conservative party in this country will latch on to this very quickly as a way of exploiting the fact that it means that Britain is having to choose between Europe and the United States, clearly the anxiety is there - we picked it up, you have picked it up - what is being done to try and reassure the Americans that this is not going to be just another pole of power against NATO which perhaps the French will not want it to be? Are you having to work quite hard to actually roll back some of this?

Mr Webb: We have obviously talked to the United States about this. The overall approach I think we have taken - and it goes to the sort of Berlin Plus agreement - is about transparency on ESDP as a whole and we consider it part of our day to day job to be transparent not only with the United States but I might say I have had these conversations myself when I visited Ankara two weeks ago. So I do consider it is for us to explain the debate and what the issues are and to make sure that at least we do not have any sort of surprises and that what can sometimes be reports of one individual position or a small group position is not necessarily assumed to be the views of everybody.

Q27  Mr Jones: So what is your interpretation of what France, Belgium and Luxembourg are up to?

Mr Webb: Well, they set out their menu at the 29 April summit and although there was a communicator in that I do not think it has changed much.

Chairman: We will be coming on to that later in more detail so you will have more time to consider your response.

 

Q28  Mr Hancock: Could I take you back to last week when at least two of you were giving evidence in the House of Lords and the issue of the expansion of the Petersburg tasks was discussed in some detail. There was a very interesting sentence which was made, which was that the expansion of the Petersburg tasks constituted a "rounding out" to reflect reality. Would any one of you like to develop that so that we actually may understand what that meant?

Mr Webb: I am afraid I was at a NATO meeting that day, but let me have a go. It is rather the point which Mr Cran was making earlier on but more generally, which is that as we have gone on since 1992 at Petersburg various other activities have come to be associated with what we call the general peace support operations world. You mentioned stabilisation and I think we gave some illustrations of that. But it has also been the case that of the new things being mentioned in the Petersburg tasks, joint disarmament operations, you probably recall that in 2001 we did a disarmament operation in Macedonia. Do you remember? We provided a space for the Albanians to hand in their weapons. That sort of thing had become good practice. The EU is rightly a legal based organisation and I think the lawyers looking at it said, "Well, I'm not sure that's necessarily caught by the existing language," so we thought we would make sure that it was. Military advice and assistant tasks, similarly in the reconstruction work going on in the Balkans there is a lot of sort of military to try and reconstitute armed forces, as is being done in Bosnia in particular. Conflict-prevention I think almost speaks for itself. It seems a bit odd that you are ready to do peace-keeping but you would not be ready to do conflict-prevention to stop the conflict in the first place. I do not know which of them it was who said "reality" but I think it was a fairly good word. Oh, it was the absent member, I am sorry. I think that is what he meant, that these things were going on in the context of peace support operations and it was now time to write them into the script because the EU is a law-based organisation and every time the EU is going to take a decision on an operation a lawyer will come to the meeting and tell you whether you are within vires or not. So I think it is to that extent a bit of a tidy up.

 

Q29  Mr Hancock: If I may develop that, part of the task of expansion will be this intensive post-stabilisation, which might actually go on for a very long period of time. Do you honestly believe that the capability exists for that scenario to be allowed to persist for a reasonable length of time in maybe two or three different scenarios?

Mr Webb: I think I had better cough up here that it provides the spur to further capability work, and I think I know that so I will explain what I mean. As you know from things we have been talking about domestically in Mr Hoon's speeches and so on concurrency (which is dreadful jargon we use), doing operations simultaneously is now an issue for us domestically and is in this context. So I think you are right that sometimes - look at how long we have been in Bosnia, for example - you are going to have a range of operations which are going to go on for a period of stabilisation and it is also true to say that the original headline goal for the ESDP was very much centred around the initial intervention. It was not quite as dramatic as that and it talked about sustaining for at least a year. Actually we have had more troops offered than we needed to sustain it. You know all about 3:1 ratios and all that. We can actually do it for rather longer. But it is in my mind to think that accepting this task does imply, as you have discerned, that there will be concurrent operations and that once we go on beyond the current headline goal we should start to think. This is certainly a phrase that we have been using in EU discussions about more concurrency and what it does say is that we want other countries to generate more stabilising forces. So you can get on a sort of rotation. As you know, you have seen us do this in Afghanistan, you need to have a sort of roster so that it does not become too much of a burden for any one country and people do not get tired. So yes, I think you are right to spot that there is a capability driver in here and I think you can take it that we will be pointing that out to people, in fact we already are.

 

Q30  Mr Hancock: But there is nothing that will actually allow the EU to insist that the capability is maintained, is there? We might be able to deliver a prolonged capability maybe in three different areas for a period of time but that is no good if there is no one behind us following through, is there, and I do not see anything in what is before us today which leads me to believe that the EU would be able to punish a country effectively for not delivering its share of its capability at the time it was required?

Mr Webb: At one level that is part of the pluses and minuses of inter-governmental, if you had a strong driving centre but you might not want to have a strong driving centre for other constitutional reasons. Let us assume we are on an inter-governmental track. I am sorry to keep coming back to the point but that is one of the reasons why we have been promoters of the agency because the agency will exactly get on to that. What will happen here is, supposing this gets in the Treaty, the EU military committee will say, "Right, what military capacity do we need to fulfil these roles?" It will do some scenario analysis, it will make some projections of the kind you are hinting at already in your mind and it is going to say, "Well, actually we need rather more," let us make a guess, "light brigades than we already have and the logistics and so on to sustain them." The agency will then say, "Right. Well, we've done an evaluation of what's already available to the Union and it isn't enough." So you need something to bridge this gap and the head of the agency, who we believe should be a political figure, will at that stage start saying, rather in the way (if I may put it like this) that Lord Robertson has been known to do within NATO, "Well, where are you all then?" It is easy enough to sign up and have all these aspirations but where are the troops on the ground? To be honest, I can think of senior political figures in the EU who, given this kind of opportunity, would do well with it and would chivvy the heads of state and so on, served by the agency, which will give them the raw material.

 

Q31  Mr Hancock: Are you satisfied that two of the major components of the EU, France and Germany, are actually signed up on the same basis we are and they share the same sort of commitment to the extended capabilities that will be needed to service the new Petersburg tasks?

Mr Webb: Yes.

 

Q32  Mr Hancock: What gives you that confidence, because I do not sense it when I talk to our colleagues in the French parliament?

Mr Webb: Well, we have worked a lot with them on this particular area, I think it would be fair to say. We have been working very closely on the design of the agency with both those countries. The Le Touquet declaration. Thank you, Paul. I am sorry to get back into the text but we had an Anglo-French summit in Le Touquet, which said something along these lines. Was concurrency in that?

Mr Johnston: Yes, it was. In the UK-French summit in February we talked about modernising the headline goal and the point you raise about post-conflict stabilisation is very relevant because the original Helsinki headline goal defined in 1999 set the target of being able to deploy up to 60,000 troops at 60 days' notice for deployment in the field for at least a year.

 

Q33  Rachel Squire: Where are they?

Mr Johnston: They are there.

Rachel Squire: They are supposed to have been there by the end of this year - June this year.

 

Q34  Mr Hancock: They are there on paper; are they there in reality?

Mr Webb: Yes.

Mr Johnston: Yes, and more than 60,000.

Mr Webb: More than 60,000, yes, over 100,000.

Mr Hancock: Really? I think you should write to us about that with some detail.

Rachel Squire: Yes. That would be very interesting.

Mr Hancock: How many of them are ours? Half?

Rachel Squire: You could break them down for us by nationality -

Mr Howarth: You could break them down by unit, I think.

 

Q35  Mr Hancock: You are now saying, Mr Webb, that there are 100,000 properly trained, ready for action in either post-stabilisation or pre-conflicts who are available now, deliverable somewhere, 100,000 trained personnel? That is the first time we have heard that anywhere.

Mr Webb: Well, it is to sustain it.

 

Q36  Mr Hancock: For more than a week?

Mr Webb: No, the goal is to sustain 60,000 for at least a year. You know, because you are experts in this business, that in order to sustain 60,000 for a year you need to have more in the locker than 60,000 because you do not want to keep 60,000 people out -

 

Q37  Mr Hancock: 180,000 we were told you needed.

Mr Webb: Well, I cannot remember the precise numbers.

 

Q38  Mr Hancock: NATO told us that it would need 180,000.

Mr Webb: What, for a year?

Mr Hancock: For a year, because they told us that you could not expect troops to be in that situation for longer than a four to five month period of time and to rotate them around you would need between 180,000 and 200,000 men.

Mr Howarth: I think Mr Hancock is right actually.

 

Q39  Chairman: It is not a problem, Mr Webb. When we finish our report and you say 100,000 there will be a little asterisk next to it and at the bottom there will be a redefinition of what you said based on further research. I think that is what Mr Hancock is putting to you.

Mr Webb: I mean, there are other gaps. I do not want to be misleading about this. There are significant shortfalls against the headline goal but I do not think that manpower is a substantial problem area.

Mr Johnston: If I may just clarify the reference to 100,000. The first definition of what Member States would offer on a voluntary basis towards this headline goal target was in the autumn of 2000 when the first capabilities commitment conference took place and every Member State made a certain number of commitments about the troops and the other capabilities it would offer and those were added up, as it were, and assessed and my recollection is that the total number of troops offered was something over 100,000. The gaps identified in terms of other capabilities like airlift and precision guided weapons were taken forward and the work has been going on in the European capabilities action plan and various other fora to fill those gaps and it is an initiative process with peer pressure to keep people up to the mark to do it. The EU recognised this spring that while we had the capability to operate across the range of Petersburg tasks that was limited and constrained by recognised capability shortfalls. At the point as things stand in terms of the declared commitments that Member States have made there is not an obvious shortfall in terms of numbers of troops but there are recognised shortfalls in other capability areas.

 

Q40  Mr Hancock: Could you then develop that in giving us a couple of indicative examples of where conflict prevention tasks, supportive action, combatting terrorism or whatever, or even post-conflict stabilisation might be involved and how far along that road would you suggest it be appropriate for this organisation to be used as a pre-emptive military weapon and how do you think politically that would be managed?

Mr Webb: I think there is no doubt that in certain circumstances conflict prevention can require preventative action. There is a problem about translation here in that if you go into German sometimes these words mean rather different things to different people but certainly preventative military action, a preventative military deployment of the kind, for example, that was done in Macedonia in the early 1990s is well recognised to be part of the conflict prevention scene. If that force ran into someone who attacked it then you would be into combat also. So it certainly can involve some kind of, as I would say, preventative military deployment (I am avoiding the sort of emotional tag of pre-emption at the moment) and I think that is certainly in people's minds. There is certainly nothing in the structure here which prevents that.

 

Q41  Mr Hancock: But by expanding the Petersburg tasks to the two key areas of post-stabilisation and trying to stop things happening it means that you then have at your disposal the most compelling weapon you have got available, which is your ability to make a pre-emptive strike, does it not, and I am asking whether you believe that the structures as politically put forward now in these alterations are there for that to be able to happen?

Mr Webb: Well, you could make an argument, could you not, that the Bunia deployment this year - in Bunia we were in a situation where there was a risk of an atrocity, a risk of violence, and there had been sporadic violence as there is all through the Congo. Before that occurred the EU, as Paul said earlier, took some snappy decisions to undertake an operation there which I would describe as essentially of a conflict prevention and preventative nature. As it happens there was a UN resolution so the question of political decision making was probably easier than if there had not been, but I think the will to do that is certainly there.

 

Q42  Mr Hancock: Do you think as they are currently proposed they are expanded enough to take in counter-terrorism actions or anti-proliferation scenarios, preventing a country developing it, or if they are not there now do you think there is scope in the future for this to be broadened out to encompass both counter-terrorism and anti-proliferation?

Mr Webb: We have tended to see the sharper end of counter-terrorist operations as being more suitable to NATO because it tends to require a high intensity, very rapid precision kind of capacity for which NATO is usually better placed. So that kind of end of the counter-terrorism business, absolutely, I think NATO is a more natural choice but in terms of the preventative end of counter-terrorism - and every time I have spoken to this Committee about this subject we have always emphasised that we see a preventative role as well as a find and strike role in dealing with terrorism- certainly stabilising failed states so that they do not become havens for terrorism I think is very much the business of ESDP. On counter-proliferation, again at the moment I think this is a newish subject. We have a proliferation security initiative and so on, so at the moment again it feels a bit more like NATO or even more wider global coalitions because a lot of the problem is way beyond Europe and in areas where it is quite difficult for Europeans to operate. So I see that as probably being a different type of coalition again but I am sort of dancing around not trying to absolutely say under no circumstances could that come under the Petersburg range because I could probably invent a scenario in which it did. But most of it is outside, I think.

 

Q43  Mr Roy: What additional capabilities will the European Union need to be able to call on as a consequence of extending the Petersburg tasks?

Mr Webb: I would say that it would be the capacity to conduct concurrent operations. The reason that Mr Hancock analysed out earlier on would be certainly a feature. I would say that to do post-conflict stabilisation well we would need to develop the links to the civil capacity. I think it is important to remember that even within ESDP there is already a civil dimension and as well as the manpower commitment of troops we talked about there has been a commitment of 5,000 police into the ESDP civil side and I would see an enlargement of that kind of arena as being sensible.

 

Q44  Mr Roy: But is there a realisation that that enlargement would be long-term because it would be post-conflict?

Mr Webb: Yes. We have done a lot more of this than lots of people and I am not sure how far that realisation has come through. It certainly has in France because it is the sort of thing we talked about in the Le Touquet summit declaration. We have not disguised from people that this expansion will require extra capabilities. We are quite clear always about driving the need for greater capabilities in this arena.

Chairman: We have to depart temporarily. We will come back as quickly as we can.

The Committee suspended from 4.02 pm to 4.10 pm for a division in the House

 

Q45  Chairman: As we are just about a quorum and as there might be another vote fairly soon, we had better crack on.

Mr Webb: Chairman, while you have been away we have been working assiduously to try and better answer the questions that we drifted into earlier on.

 

Q46  Chairman: You have only had ten minutes to do that. You need far more time!

Mr Webb: As usual, Chairman, we have discovered that we did not give you news after all. In the published conclusions of the Nice presidency report it says: "The contributions set out in the force catalogue constitute a pool of more than 100,000 persons and approximately 400 combat aircraft and 100 vessels." Just to answer Mr Hancock's point, when countries make an offer they themselves say "to offer and sustain for at least a year" so it is they who have to have the 1:3 ratio behind them, it is not to do with the offer.

 

Q47  Mr Hancock: But if they cannot deliver their 1:3 ratio somebody else is going to have to have to fill that gap? It is harder for others to fill those gaps.

Mr Webb: True, but they are saying they can. Having said that, as Paul rightly pointed out, it is a couple of years since this happened, people have got busier and, as I said right at the start, one of the things which is something the agency would do is to go around evaluating and assessing that kind of contribution in a more specific military-type fashion. So it would not just be a number, it would be something someone had been and checked.

Mr Hancock: I still think we ought to have something from you in writing.

 

Q48  Chairman: Yes, okay. I think Mr Webb will drop us a paper.

Mr Webb: What I cannot do, I think, is to reveal individual country's contributions because I think they are private to them.

Chairman: That is really very reassuring.

 

Q49  Mr Hancock: Will it reveal those countries who have also a commitment to NATO and whether the same troops are the troops committed to NATO?

Mr Webb: They certainly could be and should be.

 

Q50  Mr Roy: Just going back to the point of potential overstretch, times have changed, the original tasks have changed, the world has moved on. Is there a potential for overstretch because of the extension of the Petersburg tasks?

Mr Webb: I think the answer to that could be yes, although obviously one of the things about these tasks is that since they are not by definition to do with the defence of EU territory there is some discretion about how many you do. However distressing it is to sit and watch an atrocity in Africa without intervening, it is still a choice you can make. So to some extent you can decide how much you take on is what I am trying to say. But I think we do take this more pro-active attitude towards it. We do see this as something where we would resume debate about saying, "Let's have more useable troops." I think it is probably not a question about the number of troops overall, and again Lord Robertson is constantly reminding us the problem is not how many there are available in Europe as a whole - there are probably between 1 and 2 million people in uniform in Europe as a whole - the question is how many of them are deployable for this kind of task, that is the thing.

 

Q51  Mr Roy: In relation to the capacity of, for example, rapid reaction what would the implications be?

Mr Webb: Well, rapid reaction of course is a special sub-set because they are a particular type of troop. You need a very high readiness so that they are ready to deploy well inside 60 days. So it is perfectly possible and sensible to have a structure whereby you have a relatively small number of high readiness forces who can go out and react quickly to prevent a disaster, for example, and then behind them you have some equally worthwhile but not so high readiness forces who would come in and take over from them. We were talking about rotation so that after four to six months, or whatever it is, another group of people turn up. There are two points about that. One is that you have got four to six months to get hold of them and secondly they can be at lower readiness, which is cheaper. High readiness is expensive. The other point to make is that if you are in a UN framework one of the things we do for the UN which they find very useful and one of the reasons why Sarah has got EU and UN in her job title, which is a new thing we have just done since last month, is because what the UN is very often looking for is someone like the EU, NATO or a big military capable country to go in and do the first round intervention and after that they will constitute what is often a blue helmet force which is drawn from a much wider range of countries because often it is a good idea not just to have the West doing this, who would come and take over the operation. So part of the answer to your question and Mr Hancock's question about stabilisation is that yes, you rightly discern the task may go on for quite a long time but it does not follow that the EU has to do all of it. It might be handed over to a UN force and often is, for example in Bunia the Bangladeshis, if I recall, came and took over and did so on time but it just took them a bit longer to get there.

 

Q52  Mr Roy: But the part of the question you still have not answered is what are the resource implications?

Mr Webb: Well, we need to do the work on that. We need to go and look at the scenarios and get proper military advice about how long or how many, how often. We then need to take a political judgment on how much the EU wants to do because, as I say, it is discretionary; you do not have to do it.

 

Q53  Mr Roy: What is the time-span for looking at that?

Mr Webb: One of the reasons why, to be honest, we in Britain do not talk about it too much just before the headline goal -

 

Q54  Mr Hancock: It puts people off.

Mr Webb: I was actually going to say I do not want to deflect them from making their best shot at getting things done on this headline goal before we start talking about the next one. That is a very British thing to do, is it not, to say, "Let's get this one done and then we'll work on the next one." But I am telling you about our aspirations.

 

Q55  Mr Roy: Okay. Just moving on then, what is the Government's view of how the draft security strategy prepared by High Representative Solana should be integrated into ESDP?

Mr Webb: We are very complimentary about that document. We thought it was a clear and coherent read which both reflected our general foreign policy aspirations - and I think Paul might like to say a bit more about that - but was also very clear and good on areas that might have been of concern to us, for example the relationship with NATO and the United States. So we liked it is the short answer.

 

Q56  Chairman: That was one that we won, was it?

Mr Webb: Yes, Chairman.

 

Q57  Chairman: We are sceptical, as you will have gathered. We are waiting anxiously to see how successful the British have been in achieving its objectives. Up to this point in time we remain fairly sceptical.

Mr Webb: I am bidden by my ministers to be pro-active and get into the debates in Europe and not wait for them to come to us and so we do that. To go to the point you have just made, there is probably some prioritisation to be brought to the piece. It is a broad conspectus and there are things that you want to do but how many of those you can do will probably require a bit of close study.

 

Q58  Mr Roy: On that particular aspect of the beast, civil and military planning, do you envisage an integrated planning taking place at EU level?

Mr Webb: Yes. We will continue to foster that. There is already some reasonably good work done on military/civilian integration in the EU and we will continue to foster that.

 

Q59  Rachel Squire: Just picking up on that, we had CIMIC, civil integration coming under SHAPE. How is the EU aspect working with that to prevent unnecessary duplication?

Mr Webb: Yes. The answer is that a lot of the EU doctrine comes from NATO, actually this very sensible approach of sharing a lot of military doctrine and we have actually been working ourselves and we have contributed some people to help at least one of the presidencies work on this area. So we would almost promote something which is compatible with NATO. But since you mentioned it to me, could I just make a distinction which I think you will be interested in, which is that CIMIC has had a connotation of a military force undertaking some intervention operation and then having sound relations and a sound interaction with the civil community within which it is undertaking the military operation. So CIMIC people go out and make links with the local community and maybe do projects and help some of them return to normality by helping with getting schools opened, which is always a high item on the British agenda. The military/civil transition which I was talking about earlier is a slightly bigger concept, which is to say it is not just enough to have a good impact on the local community. Actually most of these military operations nowadays are associated with the bigger thing that Mr Cran was talking about earlier on, a much bigger reconstruction or reshaping of a state. That, I think, is a bigger idea than CIMIC. CIMIC is part of that. Getting the military force to interact well with the civil population is part of it but there is a bigger idea starting to come around, which I think is in stabilisation, which is what is the military role in helping you get from a failing state to something which is now a stable and self-sustaining state. However, to answer your question, yes, we take a lot of trouble to ensure that we get consistency on CIMIC doctrine between NATO and the EU.

Rachel Squire: I think we could have a big debate on what you have just said, but we will leave that for another day.

 

Q60  Mr Crausby: Article III of the draft Treaty envisages a group of states with "higher military capability criteria" establishing "structured co-operation". The Government were clearly opposed to structured co-operation throughout the Convention on the future of Europe. Has there been a re-think and how have the initial concerns been resolved?

Mr Webb: Article 46, I think we are on.

 

Q61  Mr Howarth: Article III-213.

Mr Webb: Yes. There are actually two linked parts.

Q62  Mr Howarth: Yes. There is I - 40(6), which sets up the general principle of a higher military capability.

Mr Webb: Exactly, and then there is a more detailed exposition in Article III-213. I think it is fair to say that we have been cautious about this area through the Convention in part because inclusiveness is an important feature for the UK. We have always tended to look for unanimity but a general sense of inclusiveness has been a longstanding approach here. We just think it brings the political dynamic of the EU's involvement more effectively if you have that. So we tended to look for inclusive solutions but being British pragmatists we realised that as you get bigger and bigger you go to 25 and of course there were shades of that in some of the earlier rounds, Denmark's position for example, so it may not be quite as feasible always to get unanimity or wide inclusiveness as you would really like. You can then start to say, is one sure that one does not want to have - if they are prepared to do it - a group of people who would be prepared to commit themselves to achieving higher capabilities, which is some of what this talks about. Would that not be a good thing? We are in favour of greater capabilities so should we not be positive about that? What if you get a situation in which your aspirations to do the sort of things we were talking about earlier on are being frustrated by a few countries who do not want to participate and are holding everybody else back? I think to some extent you can see there is a tension there between two or three important factors and the way I describe the current state of this is that we are probably a little more open-minded about seeing some of the tensions there. I think what you finally get out of that is - and I say this being a British official - it all depends what you are talking about, does it not? We want to see the detailed prescription. You will see there is a provision for a protocol which lays it out and you can think of protocols that would be inclusive and maybe mildly helpful on capability that one perhaps should not be stingy about. You can think of things which appear to take this provision and take it off in directions one did not like where one would be very anxious. So it rather depends on what the next level of detail down is like. Since one is in a situation of a negotiation and so on one does not want to take stark positions on everything when it is not clear what is going to come out of it. I think another factor here is that enhanced cooperation, of which this is a special type, has been talked about in the Union, in the CFSP area for a long time. In fact it was specifically prohibited by some of the earlier documentation but it has been talked about in the Union for many years. I think I am right in saying that although it was finally authorised at Amsterdam very little has ever materialised. It has been much talked about but not much has come of it and I think probably one of the reasons why not much has come of it is because of the sort of difficulties I have talked about. How do you reconcile inclusiveness with practical effectiveness?

 

Q63  Mr Crausby: How do we ensure that that sort of structured cooperation does not damage our relationship between the EU and NATO? Does it not lead to a completely different beast?

Mr Webb: Not necessarily. It could just be an inclusive club that ups its capability, in which case NATO should be pleased because most of the capability would then be available to NATO. I think that again is in the "all depends" category. We certainly would not allow it to do anything which undermined NATO and you will see in the Government's White Paper that we are very clear on that. That is the sort of first shift for us, to make sure it does not undermine NATO. I think it is an area where one could see, as again somebody was saying earlier on, transparency and reassurance about what is going on. It is very important that one does not have an air of some mysterious process which people might get anxious about. So I think we are to some extent in process on what this might look like.

 

Q64  Chairman: In other words, we might have lost this one? As David said, the Prime Minister said no, we were going for it. If I might cite today's International Herald Tribune, it said that: "The British officials have said nothing ominous in this for Transatlantic relations and the officials say they will not accept a Franco-German initiative to create an operational planning headquarters. Fine for the moment. Privately, the British asserted they reject the idea that those in France and Germany would seek to manipulate the vanguard group to assert a European defence identity both de-coupled from the US and NATO and signalling an institutionalised separation between the Transatlantic allies. 'All the same,' said an American official, 'the British have yielded on a key issue.'"

Mr Webb: No, we have not, is the answer.

Chairman: It did not say who it was. "'From its previous resistance to structured cooperation as superfluous and divisive,' he said, 'the Blair government had turned the concept into a fact.' This in turn created, according to the official, the possibility of a defence group with a life of its own, an agenda difficult to control and a political sub-text since Britain intended the group to magnify its role as pacemaker in European defence, of the Blair government having to come up with initiatives to give the vanguard life and prominence." That may be wrong but that in essence appears to be saying that we started off as tough as Hell, we were not going down this road and now it appears that we are. So that is another one on the debit side of the ledger. Please reassure me that the Herald Tribune is as wrong as The Guardian appears to be most of the time.

 

Q65  Mr Crausby: The FT said that there had been a deal done between France and Germany.

Mr Webb: We have not taken a view on this subject in the ITC yet. This has not been discussed in the ITC so it is completely premature to suggest that we have taken a fixed view. I am just trying to talk through the issue. Chairman, you can get me into say "Yes," "No," but if I try and explain what I think are the pluses and minuses of the situation I hope that is helpful to understand it.

 

Q66  Mr Howarth: There is clearly, as the headline described it in the Herald Tribune, a subtle shift going on, is there not, because when your colleagues came to give evidence last week to the House of Lords they said that the structured cooperation proposed should be approached with caution but they had potential possibilities and opportunities.

Mr Webb: That is what I have just said.

 

Q67  Mr Howarth: It looks from the outside as though we are mid-stream. moving from one position, which was no, but the Nice arrangements were flexible, to moving across and we are mid-stream and we are going to end up in a position where we have got to be in this to make it work.

Mr Webb: Chairman, despite your commendable desire to get clarity on this, I have to come back to what I said right at the start, which is that we are in negotiation. There is a very big Treaty here covering a very wide range of areas. Defence is only one part of that Treaty and therefore the overall balance of where the UK ends up on the Treaty as a whole is a matter for senior ministers to decide. All I am trying to do is to give you some flavour, which I hope is helpful, of what I see as the arguments here but no position has been taken on this, no deal has been cut and I am just trying to set out how I see it. I come back to the point that it very much depends what it is you are talking about. There are certain types of structure. We were very clear and I have repeated that the Prime Minister's spokesman was very clear that the 29 April small group formulation we did not like. We thought it was not the right way to go. I am saying that it seems to be possible in a union of 25, maybe not immediately but over a period of many years - these treaties are supposed to last for a reasonable number of years - that other situations could crop up. I think what I finally said is that it all depends what is in the protocol. I think some of the protocols we would have very great reservations about, some of the protocols might seem acceptable.

 

Q68  Mr Crausby: Regardless of whether we have changed our mind or not, how would you see it working in practice? The FT claims that there is an agreement, but whatever.

Mr Webb: That is where I am stuck for precedence, you see. One can make a drama out of this but as I say, people have been talking about this kind of enhanced cooperation for many years and I think I am right in saying, Paul, that there is not an instance of where one has occurred. I do not know is the answer to your question.

 

Q69  Mr Crausby: Before we agree we should clear up some ideas about what it would mean. Would there be examples where it would involve the UK? Where might the UK not want to be involved in some instances? Could we be involved in some instances and not involved in others?

Mr Webb: Again, you need to get to the protocol for the particular type of cooperation which was intended before you could really answer that. There will be some I would strongly recommend not getting involved in and I can think of some where one might.

Chairman: Let us hope things are a bit clearer on the proposed EU headquarters.

 

Q70  Mr Howarth: Can I say before I ask a specific question, you say everything depends on the protocol and I think you are right but this structured cooperation is quite clearly a key focal point in the Common Security and Defence Policy chapter of the Convention. You yourself said earlier that the EU is a law-based organisation. If we were to be part of this inner sanctum, because that is what we are talking about, how do you as officials at the MoD see what our obligations might be and in particular how do you think, if we were within this group, we would be affected by Article 15, which states: "Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with the acts adopted by the Union in this area. They shall refrain from action contrary to the Union's interest or likely to impair its effectiveness." This would be an integral component of the EU even though it would only contain a limited number of members. Can you give us any guidance on what thinking the MoD has been doing on the implications of our joining this group?

Mr Webb: I do not think what you have just read out is actually new in terms of the Treaty.

 

Q71  Mr Howarth: No, it is not new at all. I was just quoting from the draft Treaty itself.

Mr Webb: That is in the existing Treaty.

Mr Johnston: Article 11 of the Treaty of Nice.

 

Q72  Mr Howarth: Okay, it has got an existing life and it is not new. But Article III-213 talks about Member States listed in the protocol which "fulfil higher military capability criteria" and wish to "enter into more binding commitments". I think "more binding commitments" is actually rather a key phrase. We then get into this business of what happens if this group which has these binding commitments then take a different view. How would we be constrained in the event that we joined this group? Would we be constrained in our freedom of movement if we wished to act differently from the other four members? Mr Jones says no. He is not my legal adviser but tell us if you have not done any work on this yet and that this is an area that would have to be explored or tell me that I am wrong in believing that Article 15 should not worry me. Not that I will be necessarily reassured by you.

Mr Webb: Let me ask Paul to comment on it because it goes to the sort of wider foreign policy context of which Article 15 and 11 of the old Treaty are really a broader CFSP kind of point. But to answer your question, we have thought about whether there are possible formulations of 40(6). We have tried to think about circumstances in which it might work and circumstances in which we would be very anxious about it as part of trying to take this overall view. But it is still quite difficult to get traction on what proposition there might be in front of us. Paul, do you want to say anything about the generals on this?

Mr Johnston: Yes, just to say in terms of the general position that the language you quoted as existing Treaty language about CFSP, it does not affect in any way the fact that decisions are taken on an inter-governmental basis by unanimity in the ESDP field. The Nice permanent arrangements say that the commitment of national resources for ESDP (e.g. deploying troops for operations) is a sovereign decision for the nation states concerned and that remains completely the position and there has been no dissent from that principle or debate about that tenet of ESDP in the Convention or in the IGC. The question of what the more binding commitments would mean is one that would need to be addressed in the protocol if the EU at 25 decided that they wanted to have structured cooperation. As Mr Webb said, we have not had the first formal discussions of defence in the IGC. The idea that is attractive to us, as Mr Webb noted, is the idea of commitments which lever up capabilities and encourage those Member States who want to participate more intensively in capability development to do more. But it is clear from the discussions of ESDP which have taken place in various EU fora over the last few months that people believe that structured cooperation is not an issue which was really thoroughly debated out in the Convention and will need to be debated out in the IGC and these are just some of the issues.

 

Q73  Mr Howarth: But something has made the Government move its position from being wholly opposed to this concept to recognising it. I am sure that it was not the agreement of the French and the Germans to come and support the United States and the United Nations on Iraq. I am sure there was no squalid little deal there.

Mr Webb: Let us be clear, I have not indicated any change in the Government's position. I am merely articulating some of the arguments that go behind the current debate.

 

Q74  Mr Howarth: It would appear that others, not yourself, Mr Webb, have said to the House of Lords that there were potential possibilities and opportunities. That was not the language of Nice. Can I put this particular point to you because I think it will certainly help us as we are trying to get to grips with this. How would structured cooperation within the framework of the EU be different from defence cooperation between Member States outside the framework of the EU, in other words would structured cooperation envisaged by Article III-213 exclude the possibility of Member States getting together outside that arrangement and if it does not what is the added value in being in the structured cooperation if we could just get together with one another on an ad hoc basis without the binding commitment?

Mr Webb: To get you into the relationship with the coalition is a winning idea, which is a point we talked about before, which is that in some ways obviously you would rather have wide inclusion but it happens that in some circumstances that is not possible and it is still better to be able to act in a coalition of the willing than not to be able to act at all. There are things like, for instance, the initial ISAF(?) deployment to Afghanistan, which I think almost everybody would agree was a good idea, which was actually a coalition of the willing outside the structure of any of these particular organisations. So to that extent that is a fair point. On the other hand, you could make the point that in the world of rapid deployments and in more risky and difficult situations some preparation and organisation and familiarisation and something which would imply some pre-planning is a good thing.

 

Q75  Mr Howarth: Called NATO?

Mr Webb: Yes. NATO can also find itself in the position of being unable to act at 19 or 18.

 

Q76  Mr Jones: Could I clarify one thing because obviously I would not want Mr Howarth to go away with the impression that somehow he is getting away scot-free with this. Could I just reinforce this point, that the actual decision whether or not the nation state actually commits troops is actually down to that government and this in no way is going to be a situation whereby Britain or any other country will be told by Europe or be forced to commit troops?

Mr Webb: Thank you for that. Exactly. The command of forces remains a national decision so to that extent there is always that limiting constraint over everything we have been talking about. Thank you for the opportunity to put that.

 

Q77  Mr Howarth: I am sorry, Mr Webb, until we know what the binding commitments are. You said that yourself. We do not know what the protocol is and we do not know what the binding commitments are.

Mr Webb: We would not sign up a binding commitment which eroded that.

 

Q78  Mr Jones: Can I ask this then. Is it the position of the British Government that decisions over deployment of troops or forces is the sovereignty of the actual government and they will not sign anything which actually allows it to be subject to any body such as this European body or any other body?

Mr Webb: Yes.

Mr Johnston: I can quote the agreement on this which everyone signed up to at the Nice European Council: "The commitment of national resources to Member States to such operations will be based on their sovereign decisions." That remains our position.

 

Q79  Rachel Squire: Thinking of nation states and the decisions they take, Mr Webb, can I see if we can get a little clarity on just where we are now with the proposal that France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg made on 29 April, that there should be an autonomous EU headquarters at Tervuren near Brussels. The first question, is that still on the table?

Mr Webb: Yes. I have not seen it taken off the table by those four.

 

Q80  Rachel Squire: Do you expect it to stay on the table?

Mr Webb: How could I possibly speculate about the conclusions of this group?

 

Q81  Mr Howarth: Go on, have a go!

Mr Webb: Thank you for the kind offer.

 

Q82  Rachel Squire: Okay. What about then the British proposal for an EU cell within SHAPE? How has that been received by other Member States? Does it have more support than perhaps just from four Member States?

Mr Webb: Yes, it does. I think it has been seen as a constructive contribution to the wider debate and I think I am quite happy to say that significantly more than four people have indicated that they support the idea. I do not want to imply simply that some of the four have not also said they think it is a good idea. I would not want to suggest there was a competition on here.

 

Q83  Rachel Squire: There is some hope yet then if certain of the original four are looking to compromise. Talking of compromise, there have been reports of a compromise proposal emerging involving a strengthened planning cell within the EU's military staff at Cortenbergh and the Director General for International Security Policy at the MoD told a Lords committee last week that the UK saw some scope for expanding the capability of the EU military staff to undertake strategic planning. Can you clarify that for us?

Mr Webb: That was said by my deputy associated with these two on either side and is of course true but let me just fill it out a bit. Since the EU military staff was set up a couple of years ago the world has progressed and moved on and one of the features which is now reflected in our own MoD organisation is a greater emphasis on forward strategic planning than perhaps we used to do before. In fact we now have a group which works on this full time and that is because you see a range of things being talked about as future potential operations and we are conscious that in order both to decide the sort of things we might get engaged in and what our strategic level objectives were. There is a very important distinction between strategic and operational. What end state we would be after, what sort of overall effect we would be trying to achieve within a broader political and military context, that kind of thing. So to the extent that we have thickened out our own organisation in this direction I think there is a case for doing somewhat more in the EUMS. We talked a little earlier and we got into the question of civil/military transition. If you are going to do that better and you are going to have maybe a more task force approach in drawing these functions together there is an argument for strengthening those functions there too. You could make an argument for some other multi-nationalising of arrangements. So those are some areas in which I could see an argument to be made for the strengthening of functions. Whether that means extra people of course is a completely fresh point because I am known, I think, as the suppressor of increases in the size of headquarters. In fact in NATO I feel myself as a shrinker of headquarters.

 

Q84  Mr Roy: You are known for much more than that!

Mr Webb: So I do not think it necessarily means more bodies overall but I think the functions could be thickened out. But that finishes at the point at which a strategic planning directive is sent to the operational headquarters saying, "We might be interested in an operation of this kind. You, operational headquarters" - of which of course SHAPE is usually first choice - "go and produce a plan against that operation." Then of course later on you might get an executive order for decisions. So it is a very important distinction here between strategic planning, which is all about the overall end state that you get to, the overall objectives, and operational planning, which is about how you organise the means to achieve the end. That is an important distinction. So we are trying to indicate a little flexibility where we can see it justified but not to confuse strategic and operational planning or the command of forces with goes with operational planning. We have not got to a conclusion on this. These are again just the sort of things we are throwing around.

 

Q85  Rachel Squire: Thank you for that. I have come to the conclusion that conclusions take a long time to reach, particularly when we come to dealing with our allies. Moving on, I think one thing we all agree is that there should be, as part of any military alliance, a mutual defence obligation. This has been a key area for us as MPs, whether the Government is prepared to see any sort of mutual defence obligation remain in the final constitutional treaty for the EU. What is your view on that?

Mr Webb: There are two and a half places where this crops us. For those of you who have read Mr Whitney's evidence, he talked about a half too. There is in Article 40 what you might call a reformulation of previous language which goes right back I think to Maastricht pretty well and various evolutions about Common Security and Defence Policy including the progressive framing of Common Union Defence Policy and I think that the last situation at Nice talked about this and when it has been reformulated but whichever way you pick the reformulation it does say that no decision is being taken now to create common defence and that is for some future decision. It is clear about that. The language has been reformulated. So I do not think that that gives rise actually to any fresh issues for us. There is a clause 40(7) which also talks about mutual defence and says that until we get to the decision yet to be taken, which I just talked about, countries might come to the aid and assistance of other countries which are the victim of armed aggression on their territory. There is also something called the mutual assistance clause, which is 40(2), which is supported by Article III-231 in chapter 8, which talks about "Should a Member State fall victim to a terrorist attack or natural or man-made disaster other Members shall assist it at the request of its political authorities" and it is made clear elsewhere in the language that could include military means. We have had no problem at all about the idea of mutual assistance, sometimes known as the solidarity clause. We have accepted formulation along those lines early in the 1990s and it is common sense stuff. When you ask ministers about this they say it is unconscionable that if a country in the EU suffered from some terrorist attack that we would not make available our armed forces to go and help them. So that is fine. 40(7), as you can see from the way it is formulated, it is not entirely clear what it means. You could think of formulations where it was fine and you could think of formulations which would worry you, particularly if it appeared to be getting into any sort of difficulty in relation to NATO and the Government's White Paper makes clear our general disposition on that. So I think the answer is that 40(7) could be all right but it is not quite clear exactly what it means and there is a question about whether one should make it clear or whether it will come out. That is something that we are happy with.

 

Q86  Rachel Squire: I think I have ended up more confused given what you have just said to me. Let me put it clearly. Those of us who are members of NATO have always seen that NATO's role is a mutual defence obligation that in the event of an attack on any NATO ally the other NATO members would immediately offer their assistance.

Mr Webb: Yes. Well, offer assistance.

 

Q87  Rachel Squire: When we get into the discussion and the wording of these various clauses there has been concern that some members of the EU wish under this European Security Defence Policy, Common Security and Defence Policy, to have that same strong collective defence commitment that we have within NATO. As we all know, there have been some specific arguments about giving assistance to a member of NATO from certain EU countries earlier this year in respect of possible action as a result of Iraq. What we had understood was that the British Government was making it clear that it did not see any EU defence capability taking on that level of defence capability of another Member State. What you have just said seems to be making that much woolier.

Mr Webb: You have articulated it, if I may say so, better than I did the first time around. I think you have said exactly what is the Government's position, which is that collective defence is a matter for NATO and as the White Paper says, we will not accept any arrangements which undermined NATO's role in collective defence. I was merely trying to point out that elsewhere in the Treaty there is a different, separate provision which is sometimes called the solidarity clause, sometimes called mutual assistance, which is about dealing with the consequence of an attack. So it is not about defending you against an attack and sending your armed forces to beat off an enemy, it is about the fact that an attack has occurred. This is relevant in the terrorist context where some awful terrorist incident has occurred. There is no enemy to defeat immediately to hand but there is a great humanitarian problem that a country is facing. So we have acknowledged that we are happy to see resources, including the resource of the armed forces to help in that latter category under EU arrangements. We are not happy to see any encroachment on NATO's role on collective defence of territory. The question then is quite where does this clause 40(7) sit and I think it is difficult because it is not clear whether it is really some variation on mutual assistance or whether it actually encroaches into the area of collective defence. My instinct would be to make sure that we are clear it does not encroach on collective defence.

 

Q88  Chairman: I am sorry, I cannot contain my enthusiasm. You are very reassuring but I look at this document and it says, "if one of the Member States participating in such cooperation is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other participating States shall give it aid and assistance by all the means in their power, military and other, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter". That seems pretty strong to me. This seems stronger than NATO. It renders NATO almost superfluous. They will say, "No, we're doing it because the European Union has committed us."

Mr Webb: That is where you get down to the language which, as I think I have said, is difficult. If you think "victim" is in the sense of having suffered an attack which is now over and you have got the consequences of it to deal with obviously we would want to go and help them.

 

Q89  Mr Howarth: That is semantics.

Mr Webb: That is what I mean. That is exactly why we are saying that it is difficult.

 

Q90  Chairman: But it is there, in other words it has got to the stage that they are actually arguing it. The fact that now we have to argue about a semantic -

Mr Webb: No, I am not trying to defend it. I am just trying to explain why I do not think it is clear and my instinct would be that one should try to get it clear and it goes to the Government's overall position as set out in the White Paper that we would want to make it clear that this was not an encroachment on the collective defence role as set out in NATO.

 

Q91  Chairman: Do not try, just veto it. It is not a question of trying and failing. We appear to have made concessions on almost everything else so far, going through the list of questions.

Mr Webb: We have not made concessions on anything yet, Chairman.

 

Q92  Chairman: Sorry, if you go through the list of questions - I will not bore you with the details - almost every area of questions we have asked we appear to have moved from one position to a position of compromising - a structured cooperation in the headquarters, we are seeing it rather differently, mutual defence obligations, we are trying to clarify it, and we have other things too. Looking at it pessimistically, we need to sweat a little bit over the next few months otherwise those people whom I have been saying are alarmist might come back to us and I can just imagine the press release the French Foreign Ministry is going to put out at the end of all this in which it will be rather triumphal in that further steps have been taken on a road, "NATO - we have not gone all the way yet but we have made pretty substantial progress as a result of these negotiations. We will be coming back in five years and we will finish the job." That is the alarmist stuff that I have heard and frankly, despite your best efforts, I am not in an incredibly strong position to confirm that their views are nonsensical. This is what I think this Committee in almost every case has got to be reassured on.

Mr Webb: Chairman, I think you should be reassured by the Government's White Paper, which makes it very clear indeed that the Government will not accept an erosion or an encroachment on the role of NATO. That is made very clear. We are merely spending some time trying to help understand our view of what these proposals mean and how we are approaching them overall but we have not made any concessions at all. I am merely trying to give you some exposure to the arguments. So if you want me to just come and say, "The Government's White Paper has nothing more to say," I think that would be, if I might suggest, a less interesting afternoon for you than for us to try and help with some of our limited expertise to illuminate what the issues are. But I must just reiterate the Government's White Paper stands. Nothing I have said this afternoon in any way changes that position and the Government has made it clear that it has some very firm positions which I think it will sustain however this negotiation proceeds but it also has some areas where it has some flexibility of mind and it has made that clear in its White Paper and all I am trying to do is to help a little in the understanding of where these positions are.

 

Q93  Mr Howarth: I am quite keen to explore with you further just to see where the European Court can intervene in what might otherwise be an arrangement which we had all understood and agreed and where it might, as it has done in so many other areas, reinterpret European treaties in a communitarian fashion, not as British officials had believed would be the case when they set out the position.

Mr Webb: That is an argument for clarity, I agree.

 

Q94  Rachel Squire: Just on arguments of clarity, given all that you have said how would you answer the question, if the Government is so opposed to any encroachment on that crucial role of NATO why is the proposal still there on the agenda for negotiation given that we have all been assured their position, as we understand it, is that this will not be agreed except by unanimity?

Mr Webb: The Convention is the Convention and it has representatives from government and of course we were most ably represented but it is only the work of a group of people making a proposal so you inevitably do not end up necessarily with the complete perfect answer. That is why we have an intergovernmental conference which has, as I say, yet to get to this area but it was kicked off in Rome a couple of weeks ago and which is working through these areas.

Q95  Rachel Squire: So it would be optimistic if the first decision in the ITC will be to erase that particular part of the draft constitutional treaty?

Mr Webb: I think I do know how firmly British ministers stand behind the White Paper that they have put out and I think it is very carefully balanced to indicate the areas which are of very great importance to Britain but on the other hand mostly outside those areas it indicates other areas where we are prepared to hear further argument.

 

Q96  Rachel Squire: What is the UK's position on other countries in the EU indicating that they might want to sign up to it even if they allowed Britain and others not to?

Mr Webb: I think the Treaty has got to be agreed unanimously, there is no way out of that. The Treaty must be agreed unanimously. You can have derogations, you can have stand asides, as Denmark has done on certain aspects of ESDP, you can have derogations of the kind that Britain has entered on a number of occasions to do with social chapters and so on, but in terms of agreeing the Treaty as a whole, particularly in central areas like this, I think unanimity is essential.

 

Q97  Rachel Squire: Can I just quickly ask about one final area that I have always found a bit contradictory and I have discussed in some depth with my colleagues who have been on the Western European Union and that is that actually Article 4 of the 1948 Brussels Treaty contained a collective defence commitment and we have lived with that in existence for the last fifty years. Some would argue that we agreed to that EU collective defence assistance a long time ago. What is the Government's line on that one?

Mr Webb: We do not accept this line of argument because the NATO treaty followed the WEU Treaty and, if you like, absorbed it. Although the WEU Treaty was never revoked, we were also very clear at the WEU in part of it being evolved into ESDP. We were very clear that the WEU commitment was always discharged through NATO. I heard this argument but it is wrong.

Chairman: Well, the circumstances were different. Europe was totally incapable of any defence in 1948 and there could have been few if the French had any aspirations in that direction, so the argument that it was not activated then does not cut much ice today where the political aspirations are rather different.

 

Q98  Mr Jones: On the other point, unlike some I have got to say that some of us do not look over to Europe as though there are these people queuing up to take over the defence of this country. Would Mr Webb also agree that although a lot has been said about the Treaty, that it is mostly in tablets of stone, there is actually a Hell of a lot of negotiation to take place still and things will change over the next twelve months as it actually develops?

Mr Webb: I think that is so. It is very important not to miss the fact that there is a great deal about this Treaty in the round that really aligns closely to British interests and our ambitions so it is wrong to suggest that there is something threatening and unpleasant about the whole thing and there will be arguments no doubt made that one should buy the package rather than pick it to pieces and that if you start picking one piece to pieces you may find that other bits that you like get eroded. So there is all that, but all that just says it is in negotiation.

 

Q99  Mr Jones: Just on the European Armaments, Research and Military Capability Agency, in the draft it talks about proposed multilateral projects, while in the British Food for Thought it talks about joint commands, things like airlift and other things. How do you actually see this working in practice in terms of, firstly, can you explain whether there is a difference there and secondly, if we are talking about joint commands what would be the position vis-a-vis the recent intervention in Iraq where Spain, for example, was committed but France was not if you had a joint command in, for example, heavy lift or any other area of joint operations? Would that mean that the other partner would have a veto over the use of that capacity?

Mr Webb: No, not necessarily. Our first priority has been for multinational projects of the kind that you are familiar with and which can, particularly with a range of smaller countries in Europe, be an efficient way of bulking something up to make a sensible project. So that is certainly part of it. On joint commands, there are proposals from time to time for pooling actual operational assets. For example, that happened, as you know, in NATO where there is a sort of AWACS force with which we have an association and that can also be quite an efficient military tool, particularly if you are in the world of rapid reaction, because it means you can efficiently organise a rotation between the countries so you always have something available. So I do not think one should set one's mind wholly against that, but the level at which those joint command arrangements take place is always negotiable and invariably there is some sort of national veto, which means that finally you have the right to say, "No, this is not available to this joint command. We need it for national purposes." It does not tend to apply so much to Britain because we have most of our own capabilities but I do not discourage others from doing it.

 

Q100  Mr Jones: But is there not a difference between what you have just described, for example that a member country wanted it obviously for their own use, as opposed to having a political reason, "We don't want this asset used"?

Mr Webb: Yes. The trouble is that in practice it is very difficult to write something except in terms of political goodwill which expresses that, but given what we all know about the problems of airlift and so on I do not think one ought to be too resistant to that as a way of particularly organising for small countries to get access to lifts. So that if one of the smaller new members, as is happening at the moment and we have seen some of this in Iraq, want to come and contribute realistically they are not going to have an air fleet of their own but there is some joint pool which needs a bit of structure so you start to call it a joint command. I do not want to be too snooty about that. It bears watching for some of the reasons you have mentioned but I do not think we should reject it out of hand.

Q101  Mr Roy: In relation to Transatlantic relationships, how will the Government ensure that it is able to contribute to an effective EU intelligence capability without compromising the UK's intelligence relationship with the United States and will that not really cause the US a problem?

Mr Webb: Chairman, I am probably going to ask to go into private session before we get very far into this subject but let us see what we can do at this level. It is about intelligence. The basic answer is that in any intelligence sharing relationship it is not open to the recipient to give it to anybody else without the consent of the person they got it from. For what it is worth, however, I would say, having myself visited the EU situation centre, that actually some pretty good products come out of intelligence sharing. Intelligence can mean, as you know very well as a committee, some very expensive and highly specialised assets but it can also mean some jolly good on the ground reporting which is well organised, thoughtful and sensitive. Actually when I went to visit the EU situation centre I felt that on the whole the net of the countries' contributions, including our own, was better than the country's individual stuff and in fact I see some things from there which I did not know already. But your specific point about the US, I think I have probably answered it. One has very, very strict rules and so do we. If we share some intelligence with somebody else it says very, very clearly what can happen to it next.

 

Q102  Mr Roy: Okay, I understand what you are saying. Away from the intelligent aspect, in relation to other Transatlantic defence relationships, how does the Government propose to ensure that any commitments to sharing technology within a European agency do not threaten British prospects for an ITAR waiver?

Mr Webb: We need to be reassuring that we handle intellectual property by the same strict rules as we do, in other words that where information is released to the UK and only for the UK we do not share it with anybody else. It is as simple as that.

 

Q103  Mr Roy: So therefore it would not undermine?

Mr Webb: Exactly, because the ITAR waiver would be about information released to the UK and it would not be open to us to release that to anybody else unless the terms of release said we could. So the control remains with the person who releases the information in the first place. So it does not in any way undermine the case for an ITAR waiver, which I think is a badly needed bit of machinery to make the international market place work more efficiently in this arena.

 

Q104  Rachel Squire: Could I just come back to the Agency and basically bluntly ask you - and I know it is originally a UK-French government proposal - why you think the Agency will be able to actually deliver the capabilities and commitments which have been promised when that process and procedure has already existed within NATO for some time and, as we all know, a great amount of talk has taken place but actually the action has been somewhat lacking. So I am looking to be convinced that this Agency is not to be another talking shop.

Mr Webb: All right. One reason for that is that I think it will provide a political dilemma. Let me explain a bit more. NATO is a somewhat top-down directed process which has had its successes but is a certain style of structure. I noticed that within the EU you can get a mood for collective political action on subjects and it has been part of the great success of the EU in a much broader sense. What I actually think, to answer your question precisely, is if we get the chairmanship of the Agency right and the chair of the board, who does not have to be there all the time, is a senior political figure but is well served by the Agency in terms of information about gaps, which will be much more systematic so that we would not be just talking about loose numbers, evaluation and assessment. So there would be quite specific assessments of gaps. Let us be straightforward about this. Senior Solana, if he was in charge of this and had that kind of service from the Agency, which he does not get from this structure, is the sort of person - I have seen him in action and I genuinely mean this - he would go round and he would put his arm around these defence ministers in the wonderful style that he has and he would say, "Come on, you know, we need this for Europe. Can't you get back to your finance ministry? Can't you reshape your department? Get this capability on line. We really need you." It is a sort of political thing and he would be doing that in a political context where Europe was trying to do well against the Petersburg tasks. I think that political momentum is not present at the moment. I go to NATO meetings, EU meetings and I am an observer of political processes. Chairman, as you know, I know little about them but I watch them and I think that it would help in that sense. So that is the first thing, that it would get a bit of political dynamic into it. The second thing is that I think the assessment side, which actually Dr Beaver has done a lot of work on, getting the numbers crunched about what we have and have not got will bring a good bit of British realism to the situation. You would not get away with just saying, "You know, we've got this and this." Thirdly, it would provide an inner core close to the centre of the EU for putting together these multinational projects which we have just been talking about. People would be got together and it would provide a good forum to get the projects started. Not to run the projects, for that we have got OCCAR or LoI and other agents to deal with it. So that is why I believe it. I think on my side is the fact that the EU has benefited from institutions. You might think it is an odd thing for a British defence department to be proposing EU institution machinery but I think I am convinced that it could help.

 

Q105  Mr Howarth: Against you is experience.

Mr Webb: No, for me is experience.

 

Q106  Mr Howarth: No, it is against you. All experience is against you because there is typhoon, I set the example to the Secretary of State yesterday, Airbus A400M. I keep asking BAE when they are going to start cutting cardboard. It has taken so long to put together what is really a basically simple military option, which is a cargo aeroplane and we are not really a great deal further forward. Whilst I accept that the actual contract would be run by, as you suggest, OCCAR or under the letter of intent, I think it is called?

Mr Webb: Yes.

 

Q107  Mr Howarth: I just put it to you this way. I do not know that we are going to agree but I just put it to you that all the experience that we have had to date in trying to arrive at common positions has not really been very successful. I do not really see any point in pursuing it because there is actually a point I do want to pursue, if I may, which comes back to what Frank Roy was saying, which is about the intelligence business. I do not want to trespass on that which is sensitive but what I want to say to you is that I do believe that you actually do place the Ministry of Defence in a very difficult situation where you have got the conflicting relationship with the United States and that with the EU and the politics of it are that if the Americans perceive that you are not absolutely 110 per cent watertight they will not be in the business of sharing information and this is going to extend beyond you narrowly. It is going to end up affecting companies like Kinetic, which of course are active in so many constituencies in our country.

Mr Webb: I would argue that A400M would have benefited from a senior political figure to have done the brokering actually. I think if we had had somebody who was going around at an international level saying, "Let's get this together," it would actually have helped, I genuinely believe that, and a target date which was set against the European target and I could argue that Airbus has been a very good project run in a different way.

 

Q108  Mr Howarth: I think the Airbus has and what you have in your favour there is that Airbus was really directed not by the British Government but actually by the French government, who put the French national interest and their hostility to the United States above all else and we have shared in the result.

Mr Webb: That is the sort of climate I would hope to try and create for the Agency. On intelligence, Chairman, I would like to say let us not talk this issue into a problem. I have told you that the US can be 100 per cent guaranteed. I remember the JIC. I have been through this. I have colleagues from the agencies who are just as intense. There is another scrutiny committee which takes a lot of interest in this. I can assure you that there are 100 per cent watertight arrangements to ensure that no US released intelligence is abused by Britain and please let us not talk it up. If you want to ask me some more questions let us go behind the curtain.

 

Q109  Chairman: We had other questions to ask but time is running on and we will drop you a note. I did not want to ask you to defend the role of the Defence Committee vis-a-vis the European Parliament, Mr Webb. That will be for other people to reassure us that the European Parliament's role is not going to subordinate the legislatures in the national government side. That is given as far as we are concerned. Thank you very much and one day we will have a chat to you, Dr Beaver.

Mr Webb: I am sorry, that is my mistake.

Chairman: I could see you were trying very hard to talk to us, but you take it up with Simon later on. Thank you so very much for coming. It has been very helpful.