National Defence committee  Transparency, yes. Actually, that's exactly where we find that NATO is. In fact, whenever we ask for something and say that it's for transparency's sake, they fall all over themselves to be helpful. They recognize the value of the parliamentary organization providing transparency—and not accountability, if you like, but letting people see what they do.

National Defence committee  We do everything we can in that regard. We have several meetings per year where we specifically engage partners from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf. This year alone we've got three visits to the Gulf. We've done Abu Dhabi, we're doing Qatar, and we hope to do Saudi Arabia.

National Defence committee  Thank you for that. First of all, on the Arctic, by the way, the members of the assembly who are Arctic powers, if you like, have ensured that it features regularly on the assembly's agenda. For example, this year one of our committees is going to be specifically looking at search and rescue capabilities, and they have made sure that our members resist the temptation to be exclusively south-focused and actually look at the particular challenges that are changing in the Arctic region.

National Defence committee  Cyber will be one of the subjects of one of our reports this year. Absolutely, cyber isn't a pending threat. In terms of cyber, even in my organization we have to deal—I won't say daily, but a lot—with people trying to break in and hack. NATO is extremely active and, by the way, co-operates very well with the European Union on that.

National Defence committee  I don't think the alliance works with sticks as well as it does with carrots, and I don't think anyone would go as far as talking about expulsion or anything like that. In fact, the Wales commitment was made by all the alliance nations. It's not been imposed by anybody. They all said, “This is what we're going to do”, and if one or more alliance members are now saying, “All we're asking is for you to do this”, there is massive moral pressure to do it.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. We do co-operate as much as we possibly can with other inter-parliamentary organizations. We find that, simply because our agenda is so heavy, more of them come to us than we can possibly go to. We have regular participation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

National Defence committee  Actually, one of our committees, the economic and security committee, is going to be looking at that this year. One of its focuses is the future of the space industry. I used to be the director of the Assembly science and technology committee, and it's an issue that keeps coming back.

National Defence committee  We actually have—

National Defence committee  The issue of burden-sharing is as old as the alliance itself, and it's been raised repeatedly, obviously by American administrations. There was a particular speech by Secretary Gates, in Brussels, just before he left, under the Obama administration. It's one of those situations that is getting worse and worse and worse.

National Defence committee  Yes, very much so. We had three bilateral groups, if you like: one with Russia, one with Ukraine—which was founded at the same time—and one with Georgia, which was founded, of course, after Russia occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia. We also have a group that is multilateral, which deals with the Mediterranean and Middle East.

National Defence committee  Are we on the record?

National Defence committee  If we went out for a beer....

National Defence committee  Gabor Iklódy was excellent. He's now with the EU, incidentally. I think he voiced a sense of it, something that is still voiced frequently. Discussions within NATO itself do tend to be focused, for all sorts of reasons, on the very specific security agenda. It's getting much better now, I think particularly because there's a realization that there's a need to co-operate with other organizations, particularly the EU.

National Defence committee  I think there was big concern about NATO enlargement. It was, of course, how much more difficult it would be to achieve consensus. Simply, the more people you add, the more difficult consensus is to achieve. People on the inside tell me that has not been the case. They still find it is possible to achieve unity and come out with common positions that are meaningful.

National Defence committee  Historically, we have followed disarmament negotiations very closely. That includes everything from agreements to ban land mines to regulation of certain non-lethal weapons, for example, blinding weapons. We have also looked at conventional forces limitations, and we followed all the nuclear negotiations extremely closely.