Sir Iain Duncan Smith

Way less than us, and less than most of the others—it is at the bottom of the scale. I simply say to the Government that the Prime Minister is right to press on defence, to get the European nations to step up, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) said earlier, we have a mechanism for that. The Prime Minister is right to do it through NATO, and we must not allow Europe to slide away from NATO as its means of defence. I watched, as did many of its leaders, when Vice-President Vance lectured the European Union in Munich. What he said shocked the European leaders, as it was meant to—he laid into Europe quite vindictively—but fair enough. However, where we are now heading, towards somehow encouraging those countries peculiarly to form some kind of European Union defence organisation, is exactly what will give the American Administration permission to say, “Well, you can do this yourself.” We are already halfway there, by the way, because we are forming a coalition of the willing but America is not willing, and we are at odds with it over its relationship with Ukraine. We agreed about the ceasefire, but America has now changed its position and will now be holding negotiations before a ceasefire. I think that that is wrong, by the way. Although I am personally a big supporter of America, I think it is mistaken on that particular point and the Government are right. My point is that we are putting the whole of NATO at risk for a phytosanitary and fishing deal. In what world does anyone do that? What are we doing it for? The answer, it seems to me, is that we are too desperate to curry favour with an organisation that, when push comes to shove and when it comes to defence, needs us more than we need it. It needs the UK to be locked into this because we are the key to so much of what it needs to do with defence. I say to the Government, “You have much stronger tools in your hand than you may think.” We have key persuasive powers on defence, and we should not sell them on the basis that they should become European and we should destroy NATO, or damage NATO, simply because we want to make some kind of adjustment or improvement which includes dynamic alignment and the loss of the possibility of future trade negotiation.