Dr Reid Stays Strangely Silent
on the EU Defence Ministers' Deal
by Christopher Booker

Last week demonstrated how absurdly easy it has become for John Reid, our Secretary of State for Defence, to conceal what is now his department's central policy: the stealthy integration of Britain's defences with those of the EU, wasting billions of pounds. On Thursday, following warnings from two of Britain's best-known former military commanders that this policy of integration is potentially disastrous, Dr Reid put out a silly statement denying that he had any such policy - on the very day he was hosting a meeting of 25 EU defence ministers to agree another major step towards integration.

Yet this was almost wholly missed by the media, whose attention was otherwise focussed on a report by MPs which appeared to direct devastating criticism at the waste and inefficiency of the Ministry of Defence's procurement policy, while avoiding any mention of the main reason for this - namely the MoD's switch from US and British to EU-made equipment, at far greater cost.

The meeting of EU defence ministers chaired by Dr Reid at RAF Lyneham on Thursday yet again confirmed what this column has been reporting for months: that British defence is in the middle of a historic and potentially catastrophic realignment, away from our "special relationship" with the US and towards the integration of our Armed Forces' equipment and command structures with those of our EU "partners". As was revealed after the meeting by Javier Solana, the EU's foreign and security policy chief (although not by Dr Reid), the ministers agreed in effect to suspend Article 296 of the EU Treaty, which allows members to protect their own arms industries by not allowing other countries to bid for their defence contracts.

For some time now Britain has been leading the way in this respect, by awarding a succession of major arms contracts to other EU countries, as is analysed in detail in a new Centre for Policy Studies paper by Dr Richard North. Trenchantly endorsing all it says, the foreword to Dr North's paper, "The Wrong Side of the Hill: the secret realignment of UK defence policy", is by Major-General Julian Thompson, commander of British Land Forces in the Falklands.

Following its publication, and a similar warning from Colonel Tim Collins, hero of the advance on Basra, Dr Reid put out a strangely thin and disingenuous statement, calling Dr North's paper "deeply misleading and potentially very damaging". There was no policy of integration with the EU, he claimed. The "special relationship" is alive and well. By way of proof, he cited seven major projects. Four are based on long-standing arrangements with the US, and soon to end. The other three are EU projects which, along with many others, exemplify the very policy that Dr Reid denies.

What made this even odder was a report the same day by the Commons Public Accounts Committee which excoriated several MoD procurement projects, but omitted the main reason why they have gone so wrong. The MPs were highly critical, for instance, of the £5 billion contract to build six Type-45 destroyers. But they failed to notice that the MoD could have saved £2.4 billion by basing their ships on a proven US design, with better missiles. The MoD only wasted this vast sum through its determination to arm the ships with French missiles.
The MPs also said nothing about the biggest project of all, FRES (Future Rapid Effect System), a fleet of EU-made vehicles whose cost has already soared from £6 billion to £14 billion. This was because the PAC's role is only to look at projects for which contracts have already been awarded - in other words, once the damage has already been done.

The failure of both MPs and media to see the scale of what is afoot - and our Government's duplicity in trying to hide it - has become a national scandal. Now the facts are available, in Dr North's paper, it is time more people followed the lead given by two of our most respected military men and woke up to what is going on.

Further Resources
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The Real Face of the European Union by Phillip Day, video documentary (PAL format only)
Ten Minutes to Midnight by Phillip Day

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