Global Combat Air Programme International Government Organisation (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2024

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the draft Order laid before the House on 23 May be approved.

My Lords, in December 2022, the United Kingdom, Japan and Italy jointly launched the global combat air programme, known as GCAP, to deliver next-generation aircraft by 2035. On 5 July, the Prime Minister reaffirmed the UK’s commitment to promoting co-operation and collaboration between the UK and Italy, with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and on 6 July between the UK and Japan, with Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida. It was agreed that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific are indivisible. His Majesty’s Government are committed to ensuring the security of the Indo-Pacific, working closely with our allies.

For the UK, this aircraft will sit at the heart of a wider system, networked and collaborating with a range of aircraft, including the F35, and broader military capabilities. It will use information systems, weapons and uncrewed collaborative combat air platforms to complete the capability. Replacing the capability provided by Typhoon, this system will sustain the UK’s operational advantage. In addition, GCAP will attract investment into research and development in digital design and advanced manufacture processes, providing opportunities for our next generation of highly skilled engineers and technicians.

The signing of the convention on the establishment of the GCAP International Government Organisation, known commonly as GIGO, by the parties of the United Kingdom, Japan and Italy took place in December 2023 and was conducted by the respective defence secretaries of the three nations. The GIGO will function as the executive body, with the legal capacity to place contracts with industrial partners engaged in the GCAP. Through the GIGO, the UK will lead on the development of an innovative stealth fighter jet with supersonic capability and equipped with cutting-edge technology, to facilitate collaboration with key international partners that will raise the profile of the UK’s combat air industrial capacity.

My Lords, I declare an interest as in the register. Behind this necessary and detailed order lies an enormous project, one of the biggest ever, which we are to undertake with Japan and Italy. We are talking about billions of pounds involved. This is only a small part of it but the importance of the bigger picture is colossal. Behind that lies a weaving together of the most advanced parts of Japanese and British industry in a way that I find immensely encouraging and that we have been working towards for years. We reached a peak of co-operation at the end of the last century, but it rather fell away in the first 10 or 15 years of this one. Now, the scene is much revived, and there are enormous gains for Japan and ourselves. Japan is our best friend in Asia, as they used to say; and I do think Japan still sees us as its best friend in Europe. There are enormous opportunities for prosperity in this country.

All I am asking of the Minister, who introduced this very clearly indeed, is that if there are any bumps along the road, any postponements or any difficulties arising out of interpretation of this order, please could they be handled with the utmost consideration of that wider picture, the sensitivities on both sides and the fact that an enormous amount is at stake? No aircraft will fly for 11 years. It is a long way ahead, and we have many challenges to pass through, and world conditions will probably change enormously by the time we get there. I am sure what I am saying is obvious to the Minister and her government colleagues and I ask to be forgiven for reiterating it. There is a great deal at stake.

My Lords, I very much welcome this new arrangement. It is very encouraging that this was started under one Government and is being continued by another. I hope that will be a good example of further co-operation between the Government and His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The doubts that were expressed about this programme at one stage appear to have been pushed aside. Certainly, it is important, in an international agreement such as this, that we do not renege. I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, comes to make his report, he will bear in mind the overriding importance of this, not only internationally but militarily.

My Lords, I shall speak relatively briefly—I hope—to this order. I declare an interest as chair of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group. My noble friend who spoke a moment ago was chair of that group previously. It gives us, I believe, an important perspective on the remarkable strengthening of the UK-Japan relationship over this last decade, which we should certainly treasure. As I have this opportunity, I join in welcoming the noble Baroness to the Government Front Bench and wishing her very well.

I do not want to talk about the capability of the GCAP or Tempest—not least coming after the noble and gallant Lord—as I think we are all agreed about its vital importance as a bridge to the kind of defence and security challenges we may face in the middle of this century, or from 2035 if the in-service date is 2035. However, we can already see, not least in the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, just how important it is to have air superiority and to be able to control, as Tempest will, the many unmanned aerial vehicles and the scope and range of the responsibilities that pilots of Tempest will have in the future, and how impossible it would be to engage in any conflict successfully without that kind of air superiority which Tempest can provide.

In relation to this order, as the noble Baroness quite rightly said in her introduction, it is clearly necessary for the implementation of the convention, and I think we are very much looking forward to having GIGO in the UK as the headquarters and to supporting from that headquarters the industrial partnership that is already demonstrating its economic importance in this country. I just want to focus on the relationship of this order to the convention. The order is necessary for its implementation. We are, as I understand it, the first of the three partners to undertake an order of this kind, and we are looking forward to ratification in the autumn.

I remind the House that, on 9 April, the International Agreements Committee published its eighth report, which was on the GIGO convention. Without quoting it at length, paragraph 50 in particular made a recommendation relating to the extent of the privileges and immunities and its interaction with the headquarters of GIGO in this country. My point is not really to discuss that but to say, as a former member of the International Agreements Committee, that we secured the “Grimstone rule”, which says that if a committee of this House—in this case, appropriately, the International Agreements Committee—makes a report drawing an international agreement, such as this convention, to the special attention of the House, the agreement should be given time for a debate in this House prior to ratification. The FCDO is clearly the responsible department in relation to international agreements, so I simply ask the noble Baroness whether she will restate the Government’s commitment to respond to that report and to arrange time for a debate in this House on the convention prior to ratification.

Finally, there was a good, useful and interesting debate in the other place on 24 July. I share with my good and honourable friend Dr Andrew Murrison, who was a former Defence Minister, the statement he made at col. 694:

“No Government in their right mind would cancel this project”.—[Official Report, Commons, 29/7/24; col. 694.]

I do not think that is really the issue. The issue is that our Japanese colleagues would very reasonably understand that a new Government must assess the strategic defence environment with which they are faced and the priorities that they must attach in their strategic defence review. I think they would wish, where there are clearly leading defence priorities, of which I think it is widely held this is one, that that is made clear by the Government at the earliest possible stage, and in particular that nothing is done as a consequence of the SDR that would imperil the timetable—clearly, the Government are getting on with this order—of the implementation of the convention and its ratification and, of course, most importantly, the development of the programme and the in-service date of 2035. If they can see that the British Government are not prejudicing any of the operational and implementation aspects of the convention or the GCAP project, I think they will completely understand the importance of this Government having a modicum of time in which to assess their own defence priorities.

However, subject to that, I hope that the House will approve the order and we can see the GIGO established in this country as soon as possible.

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, on her appointment, and I thank her for introducing this statutory instrument. I must declare my interest as a consultant to Japan Bank for International Cooperation and as an adviser to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.

The noble Baroness the Leader of the House was right to ask your Lordships to dispense with Standing Order 73 to allow the statutory instrument to be approved, notwithstanding that the Joint Committee has not been able to consider it and has not laid a report before your Lordships, as it is normally obliged to do.

As the Minister explained, the SI before us supports the implementation of an international treaty, namely the convention between the Governments of Italy, Japan and the UK, signed in December 2023, establishing the GIGO—I think our Italian friends pronounce it “JIGO”, but I will follow the example of the noble Baroness. She said that the treaty had been signed before the election but could not be implemented because of the Dissolution. I am not quite clear why this was not done before the Dissolution, but I am happy that the Government recognise the importance of taking action to avoid delays to the timelines that we have agreed with our Japanese and Italian partners.

Most of our Japanese friends who are involved with the project had wanted it to be a bilateral project between Japan and the United Kingdom and initially resisted our proposal that it should be a trilateral project including Italy. They thought that a bilateral project with only two partners would be less at risk of delays than a trilateral or multilateral project, whoever the partners are. The need of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force for the GCAP to be delivered on time is even more pressing than our own, because its F2 aircraft must be replaced by 2035, whereas the RAF Typhoons may be capable of extending their working lives to some extent. I welcome the fact that the Government have taken account of the need to provide assurance to the Government of Japan that they are determined to avoid a delay such as is now feared. Can the Minister tell the House when the announcement on the location of the GIGO will be made? We know that it will be in the UK, but the announcement as to where it will be located has already been delayed well beyond what was expected.

I had not intended to intervene, but I have been very interested to listen to other noble Lords talk about this issue. It is a pity, on something of such profound importance, on which, as many Members have said, billions of pounds are at stake, that we have not had any opportunity for our committees to come forward to this House and tell us the level of commitment that is being made. Is it a commitment that we are bound by until the completion of the project, or are there ways in which the concept can be changed?

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that this is an immensely important step forward in industrial partnership between Japan and the United Kingdom. That is very important. We all know what huge benefit we gained from the revival of our car industry from the 1980s onwards as a result of Japanese commitment to the UK. This is an opportunity for another wave of that partnership.

However, I was on the European Affairs Committee of this House for a long time, and I am conscious that our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, was always warning us about the dangers of British overcommitment on defence questions—an overcommitment that we would be unable to fulfil. My noble friend Lord Donoughue will remember this: one of the key things that the Wilson Governments got right in the 1960s was the decision, in 1968, to withdraw east of Suez, because it put our defence policy on an affordable and deliverable basis when Britain was no longer in a position to do that.

There are issues here. The most important defence priority of the moment is not an aircraft in 15 years’ time, it is getting troops, which we do not have, on the ground in the Baltic states on the borders with Russia to deter any potential Russian aggression as a result of the Ukraine war. That is the biggest priority and the biggest need in the defence budget. We have to be wary about these very long-term, hugely expensive commitments.