There are areas that could be looked at if there was a will—which, at present, I do not think there is, on either side. Stuart McMillan asked about areas with very quick wins. They could exist in non-security-related foreign policy such as general crisis management arrangements. Frankly, if both sides wanted to do it, a deal on how the United Kingdom related to the common foreign and security policy could be written down and sorted out, and a pragmatic agreement on it could be reached very quickly.
The further we get into the hard defence issues, or the hard security issues—whether they are to do with counterterrorism and exchanges of intelligence relationships and databases; defence, where we get into equipment issues and therefore commercial issues and a range of issues that are closely related to the trade agreements; or quotas, participation, project management or access to financing—we will find it harder and harder to get agreement, because the national interests of some very big member states with very big commercial interests in defence will come into play.
10:45
I cannot see the EU wanting to, or being able to, dissociate the non-commercial, non-defence industry aspects of defence from the other security interests. They have always been bundled, and they are linked. There is a link between capabilities in equipment terms and some of the other capabilities to do with training, readiness, operational headquarters and so on, all of which have been political shibboleths in the United Kingdom, and particularly in the Conservative Party, which is now in government. I cannot see any easy way of separating those defence issues.
Internal security issues, whether they are to do with counterterrorism or organised crime and so on, could be filleted out. They do not have to be bundled with defence. That would very much depend on whether both sides were willing to do that, which comes back to what I was saying about sequencing. I think that, because the EU side perceives that this is where it has the maximum leverage, as we said earlier, it will want to start with issues such as fish quotas and the trading of goods and not get on to those other areas until it has established a baseline of the UK’s willingness to co-operate.
The answer is that there is a lot that could be done. In practice, it will not be. Does this mean that we will suddenly be exposed to a wave of counterterrorism and so on that we would not have been exposed to before? I do not think that anybody should be sensationalist about that. The reality is that, although police, justice and judicial co-operation will have serious obstacles put in its way, when it comes to hard operational co-operation between security and intelligence services, that will continue to happen rather quietly, bilaterally and not under an EU umbrella. If there is an immediate, real threat to the United Kingdom that originates in another member state, I would expect the security and intelligence services to talk to one another rapidly, as they have always done.