That the Grand Committee takes note of the Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Government of Australia and the Government of the United States of America for the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information, laid before the House on 29 November 2021.
Relevant document: 14th Report of the International Agreements Committee (special attention drawn by the report)
My Lords, I am delighted to open this debate. In doing so, I thank my colleagues on the International Agreements Committee—particularly my noble friend Lady Liddell and the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, from whom we will hear shortly—together with our officials for their superlative efforts in turning round our report, which was published on Thursday, so that we could bring this agreement to the attention of the Committee and so provide the only opportunity for the Lords to consider this significant agreement prior to ratification.
The treaty in front of us may represent only a start. It is a legally binding framework for the exchange of sensitive information on nuclear propulsion between the three nations over a preparatory 18 months. However, there is no doubt that this three-way commitment providing for nuclear-propelled Australian submarines is of considerable strategic significance, with implications for our approach to the Indo-Pacific region and China. We look forward to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, setting out of the context in which this treaty, and the subsequent co-operation on submarines et cetera, falls. This is particularly pertinent given that the announcement of the trilateral pact was somewhat unexpected and had not been trailed in earlier discussions.
I will leave it to others, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, to comment on the response AUKUS received in France. We know that the Chinese described it as “extremely irresponsible” and representing a “Cold War mentality”, whereas Japan gave it a warm welcome.
Australia is the second-largest arms importer in the world. We will no doubt be hoping to boost our sales there, which might mitigate some of the fears that our farmers have about the Australian free trade agreement. Can the Minister outline the economic benefits that the Government think will flow from the agreement and indicate whether she envisages any other benefits, such as helping our efforts to renew Trident through support for relevant industries?
My Lords, as a member of the International Agreements Committee I am very pleased to have this opportunity to follow our Chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town. I very much look forward to this debate, which will include several expert contributions that will be of particular value to the House, not only now, in the process of scrutinising this agreement, but perhaps more particularly in setting the scene for the engagement between the three parties to this agreement and the agreements to follow.
If I may, I will reinforce the point that our Chair made. The committee’s report essentially welcomes the agreement; we simply make one point that seems to have been taken for granted, as she said, by the Australian treaties committee: that further agreements and amendments to this agreement will be subject to further scrutiny. It literally said: “any action will be subject to further scrutiny”. If that is the case for the Australian Parliament, clearly, it should also be the case for this Parliament, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to make that simple and straight- forward commitment.
There is intended to be considerable follow-up activity on the agreement, so the substance of it is not so great that we can debate many details now. It is intended to initiate a wider co-operation not only on nuclear-powered propulsion systems for submarines but on areas of cyberwarfare, AI, quantum technologies and undersea technologies generally. I hope that today, we will hear a bit more about what the scope of that collaboration may look like.
May I say to my noble friend that I thought the agreement immensely encouraging in several respects? First, at the simple, mundane, practical level, it is encouraging that Governments in this day and age were able to negotiate something of a strategic and significant character, for several months and with deep engagement, with nobody leaking it. That is fantastic. We arrived at 15 September, and everybody was surprised, including the French. It is to the Government’s credit that they were able to do that.
My Lords, I should at the outset make it clear that I welcome the agreement by the US and the UK to make naval nuclear propulsion information available to Australia, one of our oldest and most valuable allies. A step such as this, which will substantially enhance the deterrent capacity of an ally in a sensitive and strategically important region of the world where tensions and challenges are on the rise, makes good sense. When the dust has settled, one hopes that all western allies that have a stake in the security of Indo-Pacific region—including France, however much it was justifiably affronted by the way the announcement of this agreement was handled—will recognise that we all collectively have much to gain from Australia’s increased naval capability.
As to the announcement of the agreement, there, I am afraid, the positive tone changes. That was a travesty of diplomacy. In future years, I suspect this episode will be taught at diplomatic academies across the world as how quite unnecessarily to lose both friends and influence. Why did the Prime Minister think it was sensible to rub salt in French wounds by insulting President Macron with some ill-chosen Franglais, in sharp contrast to President Biden’s willingness to offer an apology and seek to put hard feeling behind us? Are we so pre-eminent in world affairs that we can hope to get away unscathed with that kind of performance? Perhaps the Minister can use the opportunity of replying to this debate to match President Biden’s example. I would greatly welcome it if she did.
Some important questions remain to be answered about the agreement, and I hope the Minister will be able to respond to them. Here are three. First, is this agreement in no sense a defence pact or treaty with objectives and obligations similar to those in the Atlantic alliance? I ask that because a great deal of the press comment has been extraordinarily wide of the mark, as I understand it. The words “pact”, “mutual defence treaty” and so on are thrown around, and it would be a great help if the Minister could correct that—if I am right in thinking that it needs correcting. I hope the answer is no, since I do not think that this is the moment to revive those Cold War relics SEATO and CENTO. To do so would risk opening up rifts in what we must hope will be the widest possible involvement of countries in the Indo-Pacific region, working together to deter any possible Chinese attempt to extend its sphere of influence. I doubt very much whether India, Japan, South Korea or even New Zealand would contemplate joining such a mutual defence organisation, and we surely do not want to slip into new a Cold War mentality when the solution of so many of the world’s problems, such as those relating to climate change, health, trade and nuclear non-proliferation, necessitate working with China.
I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the committee for the work they have done and for creating the opportunity to debate this issue and the agreement before us. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I welcome it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, it is particularly welcome as this is a new agreement that covers an area for which there has never been this opportunity before—namely, the Indo-Pacific waters. I hope it presages and prefaces more interplay between the parties involved.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I also express my regret at the lapse in diplomatic judgment that led to France being left out in the cold. I say this simply because I have never represented a part of the south; I have always represented parts of either the north or the east of England. But I am mindful that we are extremely dependent on France at the moment regarding the number of migrants who come to this country. Noble Lords must ask ourselves how prepared we would be, if the roles were reversed and this was happening to us, to police our waters and stop migrants coming over. I just leave my noble friend with that thought. I would be grateful for her views on the way the situation was handled with France and if things could have been done in a more diplomatic way. We did not need to offend them.
I echo the concern raised by the noble Baroness in introducing the report regarding paragraph 16 and amendments to the agreement being subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The Minister served in the Scottish Parliament with some distinction and is only too aware of the interest the Scottish nation has in this form of nuclear deterrent. What procedure is envisaged to discuss and debate these amendments with the assemblies of the devolved nations, in particular the Scottish Parliament?
In introducing the report, the noble Baroness said that it was hoped that the agreement would run for 18 months. Can the Minister confirm that? The very useful note provided by the Library in preparation for today says that the agreement will stay in force until 31 December 2023, but it does not say when it will come into force or when all three partner countries will have completed their respective internal procedures to ratify international agreements. I fully accept that it is extremely important that we share the naval nuclear propulsion information that lies at the heart of the agreement, which is why I warmly welcome the agreement before us.
My Lords, as the UK redefines its role in the world, it must remain globally competitive, dynamic and outward facing. The key foreign policy strategy for that is the integrated review which we launched on 16 March last year.
As president of the CBI, I know that business welcomed the importance placed on relations with key growth markets to boost business confidence, along with a balanced approach to China as outlined in the review. AUKUS is an example of this strategy in action; it is an acknowledgment that the key battlegrounds will not be in the industries of old but in industries of the future, including nuclear, and having this agreement shows that the UK is going to collaborate to ensure that we have the competitive advantage to offer the world.
Unless the West steps up and collaborates, it leaves China and others to fill the void. China accelerated its CPTPP accession plans and made formal announcements to that effect just days after the AUKUS pact announcement. That was not unrelated.
China is very competitive in some of the industries of the future, leading the world on AI and autonomous vehicles, but we in the UK also have significant strengths and services—also in AI—with innovation spinning out of our best of the best universities in the world, including on things like graphene. There is an important dynamic on standards and rules of the future across many of these technologies and industries, and the UK should be at the forefront of leading and convening those dialogues. We should be the key interlocutor bridging different views. We had the G7 summit last year, which we hosted and led, and we have the G20 in Indonesia next year. These are key moments, and these collaborations can really create a global leadership role for the UK promoting multilateralism and partnership, ideally rooted in human rights and the rule of law. These are the types of values we hold dear in our economy.
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for tabling this Motion to take note of the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information Agreement. It was announced in a joint statement in September last year and immediately had strategic impact. Although China was not mentioned, the whole thrust of Australia’s decision to opt for nuclear vice conventional submarines was to counter the threats of China’s aggressive posture in the vast Indo- Pacific region.
China is, for example, building a military base on Vanuatu. Why is she doing that? She is building islands on reefs in the South China Sea and claiming ownership of the waters around it, contrary to international law; breaking agreements regarding Hong Kong; threatening Taiwan; and claiming the Japanese Senkaku Islands. One can add to this the impact of the belt and road initiative—China has, for example, now taken over the best deep-water port in Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, which we used to call Trincomalee, because Sri Lanka was not paying the money it owed—and its treatment of the Uighur population; it is quite apparent that China has no respect for the world order established post World War II.
Individual nations have little impact on what China does. She does not really care what each one of them is doing separately but, when they join together, she pays much more notice. There is no doubt that the Quad, which has already been talked about—the alliance between Australia, India, Japan and the USA—was something China did not like. We have seen that from a lot of things that have been said. AUKUS, the next alliance to confront China, also had an impact and was followed very shortly afterwards by the Japan-Australia agreement. Unsurprisingly, China reacted very negatively to the announcement of AUKUS, which confirms in my mind that we are going down the right route and that it was a good thing to do.
As noble Lords are aware—a number of speakers have mentioned it—this is about much more than a geopolitical move. AUKUS potentially comes with very lucrative defence and security opportunities for UK industry and opportunities within the scientific world, not just in submarine build but in lots of the other areas mentioned: cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and additional undersea capabilities.
My Lords, the debate can now continue. I have agreed that if we have further votes, we will try not to take the full 10 minutes, if everyone has managed to vote electronically, so that we can proceed.
My Lords, the United States has also established a US submarine advisory committee, which is advising the Australians on options. Can the Minister say whether we have anyone on that committee? What relationship does that advisory committee have with the US nuclear-powered submarine task force currently working with the UK to identify the best way for Australia to acquire a nuclear submarine fleet? I hope this is not a separate group doing separate work. We need to make sure this is all properly co-ordinated, otherwise we will find that we miss out on things. I am surprised that we have not established a post similar to Jim Miller’s post. Rather our national security adviser is pulling together all the strands from various departments such as the MoD, the FCDO, BEIS and others and is a very busy man. Surely we need to have someone who can focus full-time on this programme, or something will fall between the cracks and we will be outmanoeuvred by our great American friends, who are very good at doing business, and we will be caught out.
Picking the right design for the Royal Australian Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines is extraordinarily complex, and difficult choices will need to be made. There are two prime contenders: the Royal Navy’s Astute class and the US Navy’s Virginia-class Block V submarine or possibly the Astute successor or the Block VI Virginia-class which is going to replace the Block V. None of them will require refuelling. In answer to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, they will be provided straightaway with a core and a reactor that runs through their entire life.
Numerous issues will need to be considered, including fleet size, submarine service life, Australian defence self-reliance, Australian industry, content, design risks, size, crewing, payload delivery, sustainment of operations, training regimes, export controls and nuclear controls within Australia. It has been assessed that a critical mass of 10 Australian SSNs would be required to sustain sufficient certified personnel at sea and ashore and that it will be at least 15 years from now before there are enough qualified Australians to run even one nuclear submarine in a self-reliant manner. Provision of the boats will take even longer than that. This is highly complex and difficult to organise.
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However, our involvement is not simply about arms sales, and nor does it include any military role. Rather, as Chatham House opined, AUKUS is a wider political response to “China’s growing hard power”. That is why the International Agreements Committee wanted the political scene to be properly set out by the Government before the treaty is ratified. When she replies, can the Minister touch on the Government’s assessment of the agreement’s impact on international relations, particularly with France, China and the Pacific region, as well as its effect on the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing agreement between the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand? Can she also clarify what engagement will take place with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which I assume will be led by Australia?
I am deliberately leaving well alone the naval uses and potential of this initiative, given the expertise that we will shortly hear from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Boyce, whose intimate knowledge of the inside of a submarine is surpassed by few others, let alone his wider defence knowledge; from my noble friend Lord West of Spithead, whose very title is testimony to his special interest—no one who has sat in our Chamber during Oral Questions can ever have doubted that; and from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Houghton of Richmond, who may be a landlubber, but who has similarly wide and deep defence expertise.
We welcome sight of this treaty, although there are shortcomings in what has been shared with Parliament, including, yet again, the failure to spell out how and when any amendments to it would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. For its part, our equivalent committee in the Australian Parliament has noted that any such amendments to the treaty would be subject to its usual treaty scrutiny processes. We ask for nothing less. Furthermore, given the importance of the wider agreement, and given that follow-on agreements will probably be necessary, such ongoing and future scrutiny will be vital.
That same Australian Joint Standing Committee on Treaties is clear, for its part, that:
“Any transfers of equipment, materials or technology that follow would be the subject of a subsequent agreement and further Committee scrutiny.”
Can the Minister therefore confirm that any amendments to this treaty and any follow-up treaties will be laid under CRaG? Furthermore, we do slightly wonder whether everything already agreed has been fully shared with us. So perhaps the Minister could indicate whether we do have all the underlying documents, or whether there are any separate MoUs which have not yet been disclosed to Parliament. Could she also confirm that all future agreements in relation to AUKUS, either by treaty or significant MoU, will be shared with Parliament? I beg to move.
Secondly, there seems to have been a particular skill on the part of the British Government in being right at the heart of this strategic negotiation, yet the French Government blamed Washington and Canberra and seemed not to blame London to the same extent and did not withdraw their ambassadors. The UK strategic engagement was central. Unless I am very much mistaken, the report suggests that the initial conversations were between the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Navy, so in a sense, the initiation of this agreement may have rested in the hands of the British Government rather than necessarily with the Australian Government —but that is only what I have read in reports.
However it came about—this is the most important point on which to applaud the Government’s agreement—we often hear about an Indo-Pacific tilt and the necessity of taking realistic and tough measures to counter the longer-term risks associated with Chinese aggrandisement and, here, for once, we are actually seeing something happening that is concrete, substantial and potentially of great significance. Certainly, it is a step change in the Australian defence capability, as a former Australian Defence Minister said. It also seems that it has not only important defence implications but very strong and positive geopolitical implications.
In our committee, we considered questions relating to the arguments about the nuclear proliferation treaty. It is clear that this is not a breach of any of the treaty obligations on the part of any of the participants in the agreement; nor can one realistically—as some have attempted to do—suggest that it somehow opens the door to the transfer of nuclear-powered propulsion technology to other countries. Other countries, such as South Korea, may wish to acquire it, but it has taken several decades for the Americans to agree to any further sharing beyond Great Britain. The White House briefing on the day of the launch was perfectly clear that they saw this as a one-off and they would not regard it as offering any precedent for any other country to be able to ask for the same thing. So, to that extent, we felt sure that we saw no need to express any reservations in that territory.
I should declare an interest as the UK chair of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group. It is interesting that, not only do we now have the Quad—which the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, may wish to say a bit more about, including on the progress that has been made in mutual understanding and assistance—but shortly after this agreement the Japanese Government entered into a reciprocal assistance agreement with the Government of Australia, which is only their second such agreement. The Japanese Government have made it clear that they would view positively the prospect of a further agreement of a similar character with the United Kingdom.
I know it is probably not within my noble friend’s brief to respond on that point today, but if she were able to write to me about it, I would be very interested to read it, following the increase in mutual assistance with Japan—not only literally troops on the ground and aircraft deployed for training purposes in Japan, but the visit of the “Queen Elizabeth” and other vessels. There are a lot of possibilities for extending our UK/Japanese defence collaboration to the form of an agreement such as that entered into with Australia.
Finally, I wish to reinforce a particular point that our chair made about the industrial and economic benefits in the United Kingdom. It was reported shortly after this agreement was signed that the British Government entered into a contract for early design work on a new nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine for the Royal Navy with BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce. Can my noble friend say any more about that and how it might position the United Kingdom’s defence industry in relation to work on the Australian submarine fleet, in circumstances where it is reported that the American defence capability is fully occupied in meeting its own requirements?
In all those respects, this seems to me to be a very positive agreement. It is very useful for us at this stage to note some of the potential and to encourage the Government in directions in which they seem very willing and able to go.
Secondly, will Australia, a non-nuclear member state under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, be negotiating suitable safeguards with the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that there are no proliferation risks from this exchange of information? Will that be a condition of supply?
Thirdly, would it be preferable if any technology transfer to Australia—here I speak about something that, I imagine, might not take place for some time, while design and competition between us and the United States take places—takes the form of propulsion units that will not require replenishment during the life of the submarine in question? That would thus avoid the greatest risk of fissionable material, in the form of high enriched uranium, getting into the wrong hands. It would be very useful if the noble Baroness addressed those three questions. I hope her replies strengthen my welcome for this agreement.
I hope that my noble friend and the Committee will permit me to raise one issue which is even more of a threat at the moment, and which we briefly debated two weeks ago when we discussed an international agreement similar to this one, albeit with Ukraine. I am delighted to say that my noble friend Lord Grimstone has written to us answering a number of questions that were raised then in relation to cyberattacks, which have been identified by the Government as being of great concern. The one causing particular concern was that on Ukraine, which took out a number of Ukrainian Government websites and was presumably committed by a hostile state, in this case Russia.
As is clearly stated on the government website, we have seen an increase in the number of such attacks in this country through 2021, and I welcome the National Cyber Strategy, which the Government published in December 2021. However, that would be even more helpful if it contained some specific advice on how a company might respond if it was in the midst of a cyberattack and on what government resources would be made available to address the increasing number of such cyberattacks on companies. I read with interest that for most of those that have taken place to date, against government bodies either in mainland Britain or in Northern Ireland, no ransom has been paid. It is a matter of record that the clothing company, FatFace, paid a ransom of £2 million to recover its systems. The cyberattack with which I was involved led to a ransom of more than £100,000 being paid. All I could find on cyberattacks was the following statement on the National Cyber Security Centre website:
“Law enforcement do not encourage, endorse, nor condone the payment of ransom demands. If you do pay the ransom … there is no guarantee that you will get access to your data or computer … your computer will still be infected … you will be paying criminal groups … you’re more likely to be targeted in the future.”
I do not believe that this advice goes far enough. If a company is in the midst of a cyberattack which has shut down its systems and if it is not given any help by the Government, the only option it has is to pay the ransom money. There is no doubt that the two cyberattacks that I referred to came from a third state, a hostile state, believed to be Russia. I would draw the conclusion that the moneys raised, the £2 million from FatFace and the more than £100,000 paid recently in bitcoins by the company in North Yorkshire, will go to fuel the troops on the Ukrainian and other borders.
Will the Minister comment on how we are going to meet such cyberattacks going forward?
The integrated review of global Britain in a competitive age—looking at security, defence, development and foreign policy—was the first time that such a review was created and was a comprehensive articulation of our security and international policy, taking into account sovereignty, security, prosperity, democracy and a commitment to human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and faith and equality. It is a far cry from the 2015 SDSR, and let us not even get started on the 2010 SDSR—I see red when I remember it—which decimated our Armed Forces and was the worst in our history. Thank God we have moved on from that.
This integrated review sets out a vision for global Britain: our openness as a source of prosperity; a more robust position on security and resilience; a renewed commitment to the UK as a force for good in the world; increased determination to seek multilateral solutions to challenges such as climate change. AUKUS is a multilateral solution as well, which stresses the importance of deepening our relationship with our allies and partners in the world. The integrated review has four overarching objectives. The first is sustaining strategic advantage through science and technology—AUKUS ticks that box. The second is shaping the open international order of the future—AUKUS ticks that box. The third is strengthening security and defence at home and overseas with allies and partners to help maximise the benefits of openness and protect our people from growing threats—AUKUS ticks that box. The fourth is building resilience at home and overseas—AUKUS ticks that box. The integrated review and AUKUS therefore go hand in hand.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and her committee for all their work. The deal that the Australian, United States and UK Governments signed in September is a joint statement creating a trilateral agreement. This is of course on top of the existing Five Eyes, involving Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and the UK. People forget that the origins of the Five Eyes go back—if I am not mistaken—to 1941. It is a solid relationship that we have together. This time, with AUKUS, it is about the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines and the resulting co-operation. We also have, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned, the Quad agreement between Japan, Australia, the UK and India, which is also a very strong agreement and has a lot of potential. Also, just last week, we signed the start of the negotiations on the UK-India free trade agreement, which will be one of our most important free trade agreements going forward. The negotiations will, we hope, carry on throughout this year.
There are some points to note. AUKUS is the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information Agreement, and the Royal Australian Navy will be able to safeguard the peace and security in the region as a result. This will be in a scoping phase for 18 months, but have the Government taken into account the Australian elections coming up some time between March and May? Will this deal survive a change of government? We do not know if there will be a change, but have our Government considered the implications of this?
Before concluding, I just want to touch on the House of Commons debate on the Command Paper, which was also relevant to this. Of course, the Army will go down to 72,500 people by 2025. I find this really concerning. Our Armed Forces, including our Army—the boots on the ground—need to have a critical mass. We talk about the Army not filling Wembley Stadium; 72,500 is way below filling it. When my father, General Bilimoria, commanded the Central Command in India, it was made up of 350,000 troops, so this is a matter of concern.
This new partnership has huge implications and has been well received. The UK National Security Adviser, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, said that the submarine element of the partnership is
“perhaps the most significant capability collaboration anywhere in the world in the past six decades.”
There is also the potential for lucrative defence and security opportunities for UK industry, not just in submarine-building but in other areas that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, spoke about, such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and quantum technology. One of the CBI’s largest members is BAE Systems, which is chaired by one of my predecessors as president of the CBI, Sir Roger Carr, and has as a board member Dame Carolyn Fairbairn, the former director-general of the CBI.
So this partnership could be very good news for companies like BAE Systems. However—this point is important—the tilt in the Indo-Pacific is very important. We must not forget what is on our doorsteps with Europe. What is happening in Ukraine, in front of our eyes, is crucial. This is not an either/or; it is an “and”—that is, both Europe on our doorstep and the Indo-Pacific. Of course, the Australian Prime Minister has said that one of the key drivers of the agreement is the growing security challenge in the Indo-Pacific; we will address it as well.
There is another point that the Government must take into account, and this does not involve the transfer of nuclear weapons to Australia. AUKUS does not contravene the nuclear non-proliferation agreement, but there is a concern because New Zealand has said that it will not allow these nuclear-powered submarines into its territorial waters. What will the effect on Five Eyes be? None, I hope, but it is something to be considered.
On 16 December—or 17 December, depending on whether you are in the UK or Australia—we signed the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement. I was privileged to play a part in helping with the agreement throughout, alongside the Australian Minister for Trade, Dan Tehan, and our Secretary of State for International Trade, Anne-Marie Trevelyan. It is the most comprehensive and modern free trade agreement in the world. The main part of it was negotiated in 365 days. It is duty-free and tariff-free. It covers goods, services, mobility, youth mobility, digital, SMEs, agriculture, innovation, climate change and the environment. The good news is, having signed it, the next step is accession to the CPTPP, and Dan Tehan is the vice-chairman of the accession committee. Hopefully, this year, we will join the CPTPP, which is made up of 11 countries and represents more than £110 billion of trade for us. That will be very good news.
We have the integrated review, AUKUS, the UK- Australia Free Trade Agreement and Five Eyes; and soon, we will have the CPTPP. Trade and security, hand in hand, will be intertwined, not as a thread between the UK and Australia but as a solid rope all the way through.
Our American allies are taking this very seriously. Jim Miller, former Defense Under-Secretary, has been named to lead the US efforts on AUKUS. He reports directly to their national security adviser and has been tasked with designing an architecture for how the three countries will work more proactively on defence and share perspectives on the Indo-Pacific co-ordinating region. He will also co-ordinate, on a day-to-day basis, how defence, state diplomatic and other officials from all three countries will meet regularly to harmonise views and positions on the Indo-Pacific. Most importantly, the US has said that Miller will
“do whatever possible to provide the Royal Australian Navy with options to build nuclear submarines as rapidly as possible.”
Miller has 18 months to pull all that together. I ask the Minister: who in the UK is the point of contact for Mr Miller. Do we have a Mr Miller lookalike?
I believe that the Exchange of Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information Agreement should be welcomed with acclaim. It will help global stability because it will make the Chinese think and it will, I hope, give great opportunities to UK defence firms and science.