Defence Policy
Topical Debate
1:48 pm
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
I beg to move,
That this House
has considered the matter of defence policy.
It is a great privilege for me to be able to open today's debate on defence policy, and I am very much looking forward to the contributions of all right hon. and hon. Members. There is a depth of experience in this Chamber on which I would like to be able to draw in the weeks and months ahead. We all know that our country and its armed forces face real and obvious dangers. I hope that we can all work together to help to overcome them and to show our support for and pride in the men and women who serve our country so well.
May I also begin by paying tribute to my immediate predecessor? My right hon. Friend Des Browne was a distinguished Secretary of State. In my first week as Defence Secretary, I attended a meeting of NATO Defence Ministers in Budapest. I can pass on to my right hon. Friend that, as I was being introduced to colleagues from different member states, every one of my counterparts spoke of him with genuine warmth and respect, and rightly so. Those comments are a testament to his integrity, dignity and intellect, and I should like to pay my own personal tribute to the leadership that he gave to the MOD over recent years.
At the outset of my first defence debate, I would like to remember the men and women who have been killed or injured serving their country. My thoughts and prayers are with their families, friends and colleagues. The individual sacrifices of this generation stand comparison with those of any other in our nation's history. We must never allow their service and sacrifice to be forgotten, because we owe them so much.
I welcome this debate on defence policy. The primary purpose of our defence policy is to protect and enhance the security of our people. That is why we currently have 8,000 troops serving in Afghanistan and more than 4,000 troops in southern Iraq. It is also why we are investing more than £6 billion this year in new capabilities to serve the needs of our armed forces now and in the future.
The nature of conflict changed throughout the 20th century. Thankfully, large-scale inter-state warfare is today less likely than it has been for some considerable time. Although we must always have the capability to defend ourselves, if necessary by ourselves, today our security will more often than not be aligned with that of our allies.
Over the past few years, Her Majesty's Government have set out the modern nature of the global context in which we now operate. In the strategic defence review of 1998 and its new chapter in 2002, and more recently in the national security strategy, we have sought to identify the nature of the modern threats we now face: terrorism, failing states, weapons proliferation and energy insecurity. The UK's defence policies contribute towards three overarching strategic objectives: to achieve success on operations; to be ready to respond to tasks that might arise; and to build for the future. I would like to say a few words about each of these objectives.
Bernard Jenkin (North Essex, Conservative)
The SDR set out a number of key long-term capabilities that the Government were to acquire over a period. The Secretary of State has now said that one of the big projects will be cut. Which is it?
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
No, I have not said that; I want to make that clear to the hon. Gentleman and the House. The SDR continues to inform our thinking; our future procurement strategies are designed around the analysis contained in it. An equipment examination is under way—as the hon. Gentleman, who is a distinguished Member of this House and of the Defence Committee, will know—but we have not made any decision not to proceed with any major procurement. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to make that clear.
Let me say a few words about each of the three important areas of interest. Our first objective—to achieve success on current military operations—is the most critical responsibility that my Department has to discharge. I have recently returned from visiting Afghanistan and Iraq. Along with many Members, I witnessed the professionalism and courage of our armed forces as they undertook their missions in what are challenging and very tough conditions. Like everyone else who has visited those theatres, I have returned impressed by the strength and common purpose of the UK's military-civilian effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and particularly in Helmand. It is testament to the widespread belief that sustained progress in Afghanistan will depend on security and governance combined—as, in fact, is the case in every modern conflict. I am glad to be able to report to the House that morale among our troops is strong and high. There is a deep sense of duty and commitment to the mission.
I am also clear about the primary purpose of that mission: protecting the British people here at home. The passage of time and the complexity of modern counter-insurgency campaigns can sometimes combine to obscure the simple and unambiguous reason for our intervention in Afghanistan. Those who question the mission in Afghanistan need to be clear about the alternatives. This is not a discretionary campaign. The return of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to power in Afghanistan to re-create a safe haven for international terrorism would constitute a disaster for the international community, and it would represent a clear and present danger to the security of the UK. For those reasons, we cannot allow that to happen.
Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead, Labour)
I hear what the Secretary of State says, but that was not the point made by British commander Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, who said:
"We're not going to win this war"
and that if the Taliban were prepared to
"talk about a political settlement",
that would be
"precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this".
Should we not be going down the route of trying to get a political settlement, even if that brings the Taliban into some form of Administration?
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
Brigadier Carleton-Smith is a very fine officer, and 16 Air Assault Brigade did a fantastic job of work in Afghanistan. However, my hon. Friend has taken those words out of context. The brigadier was saying that we will not win the campaign in Afghanistan by military means alone, and I agree very strongly with him. There will have to be progress on the political side at some point—no one disputes that—and the sooner the better. We should be clear that if people are prepared to renounce violence, support the democratic process and ensure peace and stability in Afghanistan, we would not have any problem with such a political process being kicked off, but it is totally unacceptable for there to be in any sense a political reconciliation—to borrow my hon. Friend's words, I think—with the Taliban, who are an armed insurgency with a poisonous hatred of the west and of the decent values for which we and our allies stand. That would not be a political reconciliation; that would be a surrender, and that is not going to happen. Therefore, we must be clear about the military purpose, and we should not become confused over the semantics.
Tobias Ellwood (Shadow Minister, Culture, Media & Sport; Bournemouth East, Conservative)
I hope that the Secretary of State does not confuse Opposition Members' commitment to the mission with our right to question the strategy, which we very much do question. I am grateful that the Secretary of State is present, but I am concerned that, while today's proceedings will focus on Afghanistan, neither the Secretary of State for International Development nor the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will be present. Hugh Powell, who is in charge of the provincial reconstruction team, answers to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the counter-narcotics operation is also FCO. Reconstruction and development is all to do with DFID, yet the Secretary of State for International Development will not be present to answer questions on that. We are firing 10,000 rounds of ammunition every single day, and we need to have more scrutiny over Afghanistan than is currently the case.
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
I do not question the hon. Gentleman's motives; he is entitled to his opinions and to express them freely and fairly in this House without any let or hindrance, and he does that—and good luck to him. However, it is one thing to be long on the analysis of the problems, but we in this place must also be clear about the solutions. Those who are suggesting that the mission is doomed to failure and should be curtailed or ended, and that our guys should come home— [Interruption.] Well, I respect the hon. Gentleman for not saying that, but those who do say it have to be able to deal with one other question, which is important as it affects security here in the UK: would they be happy with the return of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and the safe havens that would be generated? [Interruption.] I understand that that is not the hon. Gentleman's point, but there are many who do put that point.
The hon. Gentleman is entitled to question the mission and to question Ministers; that is fair and proper and it is what we gather here to do. In answer to his questions about the Secretaries of State for International Development and for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, let me point out that this is a defence policy debate. The strategy in Afghanistan is a combined political and military strategy. There are plenty of opportunities in this place—the hon. Gentleman will know all about them—to question both those Secretaries of State about all such matters. I suspect that if both of them were present we would all make rather long speeches, and that the hon. Gentleman would probably not be called to contribute today—and we would all be the poorer for that.
To turn to a point that I suspect addresses the concern of my hon. Friend Harry Cohen, I acknowledge that in its form and length the conflict in Afghanistan is different from many in which we have been engaged during the past century. Progress will be measured; it will be incremental, and it will take time. We will need patience, which is difficult in an era that often demands instant solutions. I understand the responsibility on me to continue to make it clear to the House and the British people why we are asking the men and women of our armed forces potentially to pay the ultimate price. I believe, very simply, that it is to protect our freedom, our values and our security as a nation.
Clearly, 2008 has been a difficult year for coalition forces in Afghanistan. We have lost 35 brave men and women in the service of this country, and there remain issues of real concern, such as the increasingly porous nature of the border with Pakistan, the fragile nature of governance in parts of Afghanistan, and the corrosive effect of the drugs trade on civil society.
As with most things in life, however, sweeping generalisations often fail the test of serious scrutiny. So it is in the case of Afghanistan, where there is real and tangible evidence of progress. With the support of our troops, the Afghan national army is becoming a force capable of independent counter-insurgency operations, as those in Lashkar Gah recently demonstrated well. The ambition to increase ANA force capacity from 60,000 to 122,000 over the next few years is the right strategy for coalition forces and the Afghan Government. We will give our full support to the ANA's increasing role and capability.
In 2009, there will be provincial and national elections in Afghanistan. We know that the insurgents will do everything that they can to disrupt the democratic process, because they are opposed to it, but the simple principle of the democratic ideal is universal: that every man and woman in Afghanistan should have the chance to choose their Government, free from violence and intimidation. Of course, it is for the Afghans to decide how they want their country to develop, and it may take many forms, but I would argue consistently for that strong, clear, simple, universal principle.
Effective security and governance are linked by the third challenge in Afghanistan, which is tackling corruption. Narcotics remain the poison that permeates Afghanistan's political and economic system as well as its people. There has been some progress, and 2008 has seen a fall in opium production. Following the recent NATO summit in Budapest, I am confident that the international security assistance force in Afghanistan can make greater progress still in targeting the opium factories and narco-traffickers to cut the primary source of funding for the insurgency. I accept that there is more to do, and that the Afghan forces themselves must increasingly take responsibility.
There has also been real and tangible progress in Iraq towards the creation of a secure and stable democracy in the middle east. Security has improved across every part of Iraq, with the level of violent incidents down to what it was in 2004. Increasingly, the 600,000 Iraqi security forces are taking the lead, with coalition forces able to concentrate on support, training and mentoring roles. That is as it should be. When I visited Iraq last week I was enormously encouraged by what I saw. The security situation in Basra, particularly, has significantly improved, and with our continued support the Iraqi security forces have freedom of movement right across the city.
We are on track to complete our training mission with the 14th division of the Iraqi army in the first months of next year, in line with the Prime Minister's announcement of
I wish to touch briefly on the two other objectives of UK defence policy: readiness for new operations and building future capacity and capability.
Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead, Labour)
I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way a second time. I shall try not to disturb him too many times. Before he finishes talking about Iraq, may I draw his attention to Amnesty International's report of this summer, "Iraq: Rhetoric and Reality—the Iraqi refugee crisis"? It stated that the number of Iraqis who had fled their homes had reached 4.7 million. According to Amnesty, it exposed how
"the international community is evading its responsibility towards refugees from Iraq by promoting a false picture of the security situation when the country is neither safe nor suitable for return."
I know that the Secretary of State has been there recently. Does he agree with Amnesty's assessment?
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
I agree that there is a serious problem about refugees. It is good to know that some of them are now returning to Iraq, but I would not accept that what I have said today in any way gives a false impression of the security situation in Iraq. We all know that the conflict has been horrendously difficult, but we must not let that experience cloud our assessment of the current situation. We should not deny that al-Qaeda remains a threat in parts of Iraq, but there has been a transformation in the security situation in the past 12 months. We should acknowledge and build on that. With great respect to my hon. Friend, it will not do any good to the cause that I hope we serve together to suggest that anything other than progress is being made in Iraq.
The national security strategy was intended to set out the threats that we face as a country, ranging from terrorism and weapons proliferation to climate change and energy security. Of course, they are not fixed in one location or region, nor are they easily predicted, but what we can say with certainty is that the UK must develop capabilities to meet the wide range of potential threats that now exist. In the first instance, that means recruiting and retaining the right people and ensuring that our armed forces get the support and recognition that they deserve both during their time of service and after they leave the services.
I hope that Members are already well aware of the personnel Command Paper, which was discussed during the debate on defence in the UK earlier this month. It was based on the key principle that those who serve our country must not be disadvantaged by what they do and that, where appropriate, they should receive special treatment in recognition of the service they have rendered. From rewarding six years of service with college or university education, free of tuition fees, to upgrading service accommodation, the Command Paper contains more than 40 specific commitments that are designed to remove disadvantage and improve service life. It is a mark of the respect that a nation should have for those who have served our country and risked their lives for its security. That respect was why the Government were able to respond with enthusiasm yesterday to the recommendations of the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend Mr. Davies, to enhance yet further the national recognition that we give to our armed forces.
Force readiness is another important indicator of the preparedness of our forces to respond to new threats. I recognise that that is a long-standing concern for the House, particularly given the current tempo of operational commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, I hope that all Members would agree that the armed forces' overriding priority must be the success of current operations. As we all know, in every year since 2002, they have operated above the overall level of concurrent operations that they are resourced and structured to sustain over time. However, they have consistently and reliably provided substantial forces at immediate readiness for current operations. The armed forces are stretched, but the chiefs of staff advise me and my ministerial colleagues that, at present, the situation is manageable.
The current commitments will have an impact on our ability to meet force readiness targets for the full range of potential contingent operations provided for in our planning assumptions. None the less, I am concerned to improve force readiness. As I have made clear, subject to conditions on the ground and the advice of our military commanders, we will be in a position to reduce substantially our commitments in Iraq over the course of next year, which will help to relieve the burden on key strategic assets. Following a detailed review of the security situation in Kosovo, and of wider military commitments, we have agreed that the UK contribution to the Balkan operational reserve force should cease at the end of this year. That, too, will help.
Force readiness is also about our ability to respond to demands for new equipment on the front line. To date, more than £3.6 billion from the Treasury reserve has been approved for urgent operational requirements. That money is for new protected vehicles, new body armour, better communications and improved defensive systems.
Angus Robertson (Parliamentary Leader (Westminster Group); Moray, Scottish National Party)
I thank the Secretary of State for allowing an intervention at this important point in his speech, when he is talking about equipment. I am sure that he would attest to the vital role that the Nimrod aircraft play in UK efforts around the world. Will he examine closely the serviceability of those aircraft along with the important current focus on their safety?
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
Yes, of course I will. Ensuring that we have sustainable equipment and that we can service and maintain it at reasonable cost over the duration of its lifetime is a very important part of the overall procurement exercise. I can certainly give the hon. Gentleman that assurance.
Before I was very nicely interrupted, I was saying that we have invested significant additional resources in re-equipping our forces, particularly in the operational theatres in which they are active. Just yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced a further £700 million of investment in almost 700 new protected mobility vehicles, which will be crucial to our mission in Afghanistan.
James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire, Conservative)
All those new vehicles are, of course, very welcome. How do they fall into the future rapid effect system programme? Is FRES dead?
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
These procurements are urgent operational requirements; they do not have any impact on FRES, which is an important part of the long-term equipment programme. Obviously, we are examining every aspect of FRES, just as we are examining every aspect of all the major equipment procurement projects in the pipeline, but these are operationally specific acquirements for the armed forces that are necessary to meet the particular circumstances, especially those in Afghanistan. I believe that this equipment will help to save lives and to improve the effectiveness of our operations in Afghanistan. Even in the most challenging of economic times, we are demonstrating that our commitment to equipping our armed forces remains clear and resolute.
Brian Jenkins (Tamworth, Labour)
It is well received and recorded that we now have the best-equipped British soldiers in our history, as far as any activity is concerned. The insurgency and the enemy that we face has a changing pattern, so will we be given a guarantee that as and when requirements change, the money will be made available to ensure that our troops remain the best-equipped in the world?
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his first point about the overall standard of the equipment that is in theatre. When I was in Afghanistan and Iraq last week, I asked every soldier, sailor and airmen to whom I spoke to tell me what was wrong with their kit. I was told, "There's nothing wrong with the kit, sir. If anything, it is too heavy." It is heavy for a fundamentally good reason. The new body armour—the Osprey body armour—can stop high-velocity rounds. I want these guys to come home, and the body armour will help more of them to do so, without fear of injury. I am not saying that more improvements do not need to be made. More improvements probably will need to be made, because the technology is evolving, as is the theatre. In response to his latter point, the Treasury has stood by Britain's armed forces; when extra equipment has been needed, the money has been found. I have no doubt that if there is a requirement for further equipment, it will be met from the reserve, as the nearly £9 billion of total additional theatre-specific spending since 2003 has been.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South, Conservative)
Before the Secretary of State moves on from the section of his speech that deals with equipment, may I ask him a question about aircraft carriers? An aircraft carrier is a powerful weapon—it can deliver a weapon a long distance; it provides air cover; and it has diplomatic presence—but on its own it is a very vulnerable piece of equipment, because it needs anti-submarine defence, air-defence, Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service support, and airborne early-warning systems. Can he assure me that his plans for the Royal Navy will provide enough equipment to sustain a carrier on-station in sequence with the one that is off-station?
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
Yes, that is our intention.
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
There is precious little point building two very expensive carriers if we are not able properly to defend and secure those assets. We have some very capable new ships coming into the Royal Navy; the new Type 45 destroyers are a superb addition to the fleet. We will need the Astute submarines to be able to be deployed, and our intention, as people in this place and my constituents know, is to build seven of them—that remains our plan. We will ensure that the assets to which we are committing are properly secured and defended.
Andrew MacKinlay (Thurrock, Labour)
In my recent discussions with a senior officer, the criticism I heard was not of the quality of equipment in the field; it was that there was insufficient equipment of that quality that people could be trained on back home—that was the big deficiency. He said that troops go from being Robocop to being yeomen of the guard when they return. Many hon. Members are concerned that although we have some state-of-the-art equipment, which we welcome, it is insufficient, particularly in terms of preparation, training and replacement.
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend about that. There is no point soldiers, sailors and airmen going out to theatre and coming across equipment that they have not met before, because that poses a risk to them and to the operations. We know from previous boards of inquiry and from some of the coroners' reports that the Ministry has been heavily criticised in this area. Part of the additional resources that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced yesterday will go towards improving the training fleet for these vehicles, because it is essential that the guys are familiar with this kit. It is designed for their safety and protection, and it cannot undermine that, so we are putting in significantly more assets—I believe that about 30 of the new Cougar vehicles are going into the training fleet—to achieve precisely that.
Tobias Ellwood (Shadow Minister, Culture, Media & Sport; Bournemouth East, Conservative)
May I follow on from the pertinent question posed by my hon. Friend Richard Ottaway? The whole point of aircraft carriers is their ability to protect themselves. We have removed the Sea Harriers, which had the ability to go up in the air and see over the horizon with their radar. Could the Secretary of State bring us up to date with what is happening on the joint strike fighter? Conservative Members feel that we will have these grand aircraft carriers, but there will be no aircraft suitable to fly on them.
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
As the hon. Gentleman can imagine, this matter is being addressed in the corridors of the Ministry of Defence as we speak. There are a number of options, including retaining the Harriers for longer periods. Again, I do not want to make the obvious layman's point, but if we are going to spend £4 billion on two new aircraft carriers, we must have some proper aircraft to fly from them. There would be no point in deploying the ships, even if we could properly protect them—and we will be able to do so—if they are not able to deploy on operations because there is no kit to fly from them. I assure him that when these carriers go to sea, they will be properly equipped and fully resourced.
Any idea that UK troops on operations are under-equipped is out-of-date, ill-informed and inaccurate. May I turn to the challenge of building for the future?
We cannot build for the future unless defence is well funded. Operations in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan have borne out the strategic defence review's vision of a flexible, agile, expeditionary force structure, and we will continue on that transformational path. At the same time, the continuance of our nuclear deterrent will remain a fundamental part of Britain's defence policy, with a new generation of submarines to replace the Vanguard class—designed and built, with pride, in my constituency—in the years ahead.
Since the comprehensive spending review, the defence budget will benefit from average annual real growth of more than 1.5 per cent. By 2010-11, the defence budget will be £3 billion higher in real terms than it was in 1997. That contrasts with the fact that defence spending fell in each year of the previous Conservative Government. In addition to the CSR settlement, some £9.5 billion has been provided from the Treasury reserve to meet the additional costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Like every other Department, the Ministry of Defence needs to live within its means.
Bob Russell (Shadow Minister, Defence; Colchester, Liberal Democrat)
The Department's living within its means is good, but how much of that additional money will go towards modernising the married family accommodation? In many cases, that accommodation is woeful and does not help with the retention of experienced, skilled military personnel. We must bear in mind that we are already short of soldiers.
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
I think that the figure is about £8 billion for the modernisation of the defence estate, including the family and single living accommodation. That is a significant investment in the quality of the accommodation that we provide for our service personnel, and I saw evidence of that when I was in Faslane a couple of weeks ago. I know that the hon. Gentleman is worried about Colchester, but investment will also be made there. We are determined to see a step change in the standard of accommodation, and we are making pretty good progress.
Hon. Members will be aware that in recent months the MOD has been examining its equipment programme. That work is continuing. My aim is to ensure that we bear down on costs where we can; drive up value for money wherever possible; maintain the principles set out in the defence industrial strategy; and prioritise spending within the objectives of the defence policy that I have set out today. I hope to be in a position soon to make further announcements on procurement.
The contribution of defence spending to the economic health and vibrancy of many parts of the country is significant. Defence manufacturing, research, science and technology support more than 300,000 jobs in the UK, many of them high-value, high-skilled jobs. There continue to be significant export opportunities for UK companies overseas and, as Secretary of State for Defence, I intend to give full and active support to UK companies in accessing those markets.
Resourcing and equipping our armed forces are two key pillars of building for the future. But there is no security for the UK in isolationism—in pulling up the drawbridge and hoping that our enemies will stop at our front door, because they will not. We need strong bilateral and multilateral relationships to advance our essential security interests. Through NATO we have taken a collective approach to defence, providing the bedrock of our security for nearly two generations. NATO's operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo, and the vital role it plays in security sector reform, show how far it rightly continues to underpin our security. I especially welcome President Sarkozy's commitment for France to join NATO's command structure.
It is also self-evident that change is needed within NATO itself. It is still coming to terms with the reality of its role in a post-cold war world. At Budapest, I shared the frustration of those who wished to see more rapid progress in several areas. We must reduce the level and scale of its bureaucracy. NATO is still over-reliant on countries such as the US and UK to do most of the heavy lifting in operational theatres. Collective security does not mean guarding one's own garden gate and leaving a disproportionate burden on others to do everything else. Just as we are rightly debating the effectiveness of multinational financial institutions to cope with the reality of today's economic crisis, we should be asking whether our multinational security institutions are properly structured and equipped to deal with the challenges of modern times.
NATO alone will not always be the most appropriate vehicle through which to secure our national interest. Front and centre of UK defence policy will continue to be our deep and enduring relationship with the United States. That relationship is unlike any other. But, as I have already made clear, we should be pragmatic not ideological about the role our European partners can play in promoting UK security interests. We have moved on from a world in which we saw a zero-sum impact between the strength of our European partnerships and the effectiveness of NATO.
I believe that 2009 will be both a real test and a great opportunity for the reform of those multilateral security institutions. Whoever wins the US presidential election next week will, I believe, be keen to promote stronger and deeper multilateral relationships in defence of common interests. There could well be a strong momentum for reform and I want the UK to be leading that debate.
I have set out this afternoon the key tenets of our defence policy—delivering operational success, readiness for new tasks and building for the future. By delivering against all three objectives, we will ensure that the UK remains as secure from external threats and protective of our interests overseas as it can be. To achieve that, we rely today, as we have always done, on the extraordinary, brave men and women of the armed forces and the civilians who support them in theatre. Those who implement defence policies have a far more dangerous and difficult task than those who make and scrutinise them. So let all of us in this place put aside all other loyalties and unite in giving them the support and praise that they so richly deserve.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
May I begin by associating the Opposition with the tributes paid by the Secretary of State to all the men and women in the armed forces, their families and all the civilian bodies who make sacrifices at all times for our security? As this is the first time that we have faced each other at the Dispatch Box, I also welcome him to his new position. I worked with him—or against him, depending on one's interpretation—when he was at the Department of Health, and he always brings great intellectual effort to his portfolio. He arrives at the Ministry of Defence at a difficult time, but he will find that defence policy is much more bipartisan than health policy. The objections that the Opposition raise to policies are about implementation and detail, rather than broad strategic interests.
I also wish to pay tribute to the Secretary of State's predecessor, Des Browne. He was open with information and always willing to share it with the Opposition. He gave us great access to all parts of the MOD and other bodies, and I regard him as a personal friend as well as a colleague. He is a man of great integrity and I hope that, should he so wish, he will return to the Front Bench.
The Secretary of State spoke about the budget and the need to match resources and commitments. He takes over the Ministry at a time of severe pressures on the core budget, and we are all aware of reports and studies by the Defence Committee and others about unfunded liabilities. We still have the problem that we are using the defence planning assumptions of 1998, planning for a tempo that does not take fully into account what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some will argue that the urgent operational requirements have been over-used. They were useful for getting what we wanted when we wanted it, but at the cost of stability and predictability in long-term procurement.
The right hon. Gentleman also inherits problems such as the deal between the Treasury and the MOD that all UOR costs above £900 million a year would be refunded 50 per cent. by the MOD, which has resulted in a £400 million cut in its core budget capabilities this year, and the cut of £1.4 billion in the future rotorcraft capability budget in 2004, which has led to a chronic under-availability of helicopters. As Andrew Mackinlay said, there is also a shortage of equipment for training before deployment, which is one of the biggest complaints we now get from soldiers in theatre. To be fair, I have to say that when I ask soldiers on the front line whether they have problems with personal kit, the answer has changed substantially—as the Secretary of State said—even in the past couple of years. We welcome that, but the chronic under-availability of airlift capacity needs to be urgently addressed.
The Secretary of State mentioned the role of NATO. We need to examine in some detail that role, the contribution of NATO members, which he mentioned, and the relative roles of the EU and NATO. The role of NATO was easily defined, politically and militarily, in the cold war. Its purpose was to stop the spread of communism in Europe and, if necessary, to stop the Soviet Union physically. It has become less clear in recent years exactly what the political and military roles of NATO are. There are those who talk about a greater need for out-of-area operational capability and those who still talk about the primary role of defence of the European continent. We must make it very clear that it is not a choice between those roles. We need both those capabilities, especially in a globalised economy where our interests can be threatened in many more places and by many more actors than they would have been in the past. Politicians cannot simply have the upside of globalisation without dealing with the downside, which is the unavoidable importation of strategic risk.
We in the House need a clear, bipartisan view that speaks for this country in the international field about the need for NATO to be able to respond to all the types of threats that this country can face. We have a problem, however, with the level of commitment of some NATO members. Only six out of 26 make the 2 per cent. of GDP contribution to the defence budget that they are supposed to make. That is woefully inadequate and deprives NATO, as a whole, of a huge amount of resources. There are too many caveats, too many restrictions and too little political will even to use the resources that are available. Not only is that a weakness for NATO, but it adds a disproportionate burden on those countries—such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and the Netherlands—that are willing to do the fighting.
The Secretary of State pointed out that we were doing too much of the funding; we are also doing too much of the dying compared to other countries that should be carrying a bigger share of the collective responsibility they are supposed to have as members of the alliance. The message must be clear: "Do not join NATO if you simply want to be a peacekeeper or if you want to get defence on the cheap." Membership implies financial responsibility—it is not possible to get an insurance policy without paying the premiums—and military responsibility, as well as a willingness to respond to the article 5 responsibilities and commitments if required.
It would be nice if it was possible to make the choice to be simply a peacekeeper, but a peacekeeper can work only if there is a peace to be kept. Sometimes, peace has to be fought for and, sometimes, it has to be died for. That is a message that we should send at all times to our allies.
Brian Jenkins (Tamworth, Labour)
Would the hon. Gentleman please distinguish between the military leaders and the political leaders across those 26 states? We have found that it is not that their militaries lack resolve, but that their politicians lack the will.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
Indeed, I just said that there was a lack of political will even to use the assets when they are available. Those serving in the armed forces of other countries joined their armed forces to be a part of a defensive fighting force, if necessary, and I think that they find it just as frustrating as we do to be tied with red tape, caveats and restrictions by their respective Governments. I hope that the debate in those countries will be a vigorous one.
What should the roles of NATO and the EU be, in that case? If the EU is to have a constructive role, it needs to do what NATO cannot or does not do. The Opposition have always been happy with the EU acting as a delivery mechanism of NATO policy, especially in areas such as security sector reform, the rule of law missions and so on—areas where NATO has never been very well configured. There is certainly room for greater bilateral co-operation.
I echo what the Secretary of State said about what is happening in France. I know that many people are sceptical about the motives of President Sarkozy, but we need to recognise that we must seize the moment. We have been encouraging France for a long time to return to the integrated command structure, to have a rapprochement with the US and to become much more involved in future planning. If we now say, "Well, it's not real," we are in danger of failing to recognise that this is a potentially important time. We need to welcome the move, because if the moment is lost it might be some time before it comes back. Proof of that fact, if proof were required, can be found in the French defence White Paper, which saw a fundamental reshaping of French forces along lines much closer to the sort of expeditionary capability that we have long encouraged them to try to have.
There are positive developments along those lines. But—there has to be a "but"—a greater role for the EU in soft power cannot be used as an excuse to avoid basic NATO military obligations. Frankly, the duplication of NATO structures—double-hatting—does not improve increased capability. Action needs assets and we cannot have competition for scarce resources. In the US in particular, we hear politicians saying that Europe must do more for its own defence and for the defence of the alliance. I think that most of us would echo that. It cannot just be a short-term pragmatic approach; the structural relationship between NATO and the EU needs to be properly thought out.
Let me give a single example. Piracy is a major scourge of our sea lanes. Combined Task Force 150, which is part of Operation Enduring Freedom, is off the horn of Africa with 14 or 15 ships. It is working under the US fifth fleet. NATO is there with Standing NATO Maritime Group 2; that is another seven ships or so. Now we are to have an EU mission. Why? Other than flying the EU flag, what can that achieve that we could not achieve by augmenting one of the two existing missions? What will the command relationship be? Who is in charge of the area of operations? When we asked those questions, we were told that there would be close co-operation, but that is not really a sufficient answer. We need to know why the EU felt it necessary to become involved in something that was already being done by United States and NATO missions. We are not getting particularly good answers.
John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan, Labour)
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I remind him of what he said about political will. Does it matter where the political will of our European allies comes from, as long as they deliver the capability? The operation may offer them a way to do that.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
It does none of us any good to duplicate command structures and effort. If such missions already exist, we would do better to augment them than to set up a separate mission. One has to ask what the primary motivation is. Is it providing capability for the mission, or is it having a separate political identity?
Tobias Ellwood (Shadow Minister, Culture, Media & Sport; Bournemouth East, Conservative)
My hon. Friend is making a very important point. There are two military missions in Darfur: an EU military mission and, just down the road from it, a NATO mission. Both have about a dozen British soldiers. It can be very confusing for those in uniform to understand exactly who they are supposed to be working for, and who is involved in the operations with them. That was emphasised in Bosnia. When I was serving there, we were delighted to get rid of our UN uniform and go back to NATO: we firmly understood where we were and who the orders came from.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
It is entirely possible for EU missions to complement what we are doing in NATO, if those missions do things that NATO does not. The trouble arises if the missions become competitive; that is my point about the missions in the horn of Africa. At a time of scarce resources, we in the west should not waste resources by duplicating effort.
The Secretary of State sensationally appeared on the front pages at the weekend, when there were reports of his support for an EU army. Of course, that was enthusiastically welcomed in the Brussels press. It is important for us to say what we think the appropriate relationship is. We believe that our defence relationship with our partners in the European Union should be intergovernmental, not supranational. Permanent, structured co-operation can easily become the precursor to a standing EU force. The European Defence Agency could easily become the precursor to a single procurement body. Under the Lisbon treaty, the European Commission will have a role in the EDA. The high representative for the common foreign and security policy will be vice-president of the Commission and head of the EDA, and that brings in an element of supranationalism that was not there before. The high representative will have a role of initiative in military operations, and we simply do not find that an acceptable way forward for the United Kingdom's defence relationships. It is not pathetic to oppose that; we believe that it is our duty to do so.
John Hutton (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence; Barrow and Furness, Labour)
I was not going to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he made me do so. As I am sure he will know, the headline in The Daily Telegraph was not exactly the headline that I aimed to create. Let me make it absolutely clear that I am not in favour of anything being done, anywhere and at any time, that undermines or compromises our commitments to NATO and our special relationship with the United States. It is not my view that that was accurately reported. I know that the hon. Gentleman has firm views about everything European, and we have had a taste of that today, but he can afford to be less paranoid about some of these issues.
May I pick up on one of the hon. Gentleman's points about Somalia? He referred to Combined Task Force 150, which is, as he knows, an Operation Enduring Freedom deployment. He will know that many NATO allies will not, given the context, have their forces serving alongside it. The European security and defence policy anti-piracy mission to Somalia is exactly the sort of example he was looking for. It is a complementary deployment that will boost the effectiveness of the anti-piracy operation in the horn of Africa, not undermine it. I hope that he will have another look at that.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
The point I was making was that we already have a NATO mission there anyway, so what does the EU bring to that area that NATO cannot? I understand that the headline was not what the Secretary of State intended, but he knows that any term used in relation to the European Union and defence is heavily loaded with all sorts of hidden meanings, and no doubt he will be well into that debate as we move forward.
The Secretary of State concentrated on Afghanistan for the bulk of his speech and, clearly, that is the top priority for NATO at present. He correctly reiterated the main reasons for our being there, the first of which is our national security. It is often forgotten in the debate about Afghanistan that we are there primarily for our own safety. [Interruption.] I am well aware that that is what the Secretary of State said, as the Under-Secretary, Mr. Davies, says. I can hear and I can understand the Secretary of State's comments. As I was saying, the fact that we are there primarily for reasons of our national security is important and we must reiterate it at every point, because sometimes the debate about Afghanistan is lost in the language of reconstruction.
Reconstruction is very important in our ability to create a stable state, which is part of our long-term plan, but we also need to remember that success in Afghanistan is important for both the cohesion and credibility of NATO in the longer term. If we fail in Afghanistan, what credibility do we have elsewhere? It is perhaps an existential mission for Afghanistan but, notwithstanding our military capabilities, there is a danger of the broader operation in Afghanistan becoming a shambles, with everyone and no one in charge.
I was recently asked about the strategy in Afghanistan, and I was moved to ask, "Which strategy?" Was it the UN strategy, the NATO strategy, the American strategy, the Afghan Government strategy or the reconstruction strategy? All too many strategies seem to be going on at the same time, and all too few are properly integrated. As has been said recently, it is certainly true that we cannot have a purely military victory in Afghanistan, but we can have a purely military defeat, if we are not careful and we do not have the appropriate commitments. We need to be clear about how we will ultimately make the transition from a largely military operation to what will ultimately be a civilian mission over a longer time scale.
Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead, Labour)
I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to an article in The Sunday Times on
"we should stop thinking in terms of defeat and victory. We need to lower our expectations...We're not going to win this war; it's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army."
He went on to refer to
"trying to achieve a political settlement that might well involve giving some power to the Taliban."
Does the hon. Gentleman agree with that approach?
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
Not as it is put there, although there are some elements of truth that both the Secretary of State in what he said and I in what I am about to say would take from that.
There has been much discussion about the parallels between what recently happened in Iraq and what is happening in Afghanistan. However, the differences are that, first, in Iraq we were talking about reconstruction, while in Afghanistan we are talking about construction. There is very little to reconstruct in Afghanistan, and that makes a big difference. There is a substantial middle class in Iraq, which does not exist in Afghanistan, and, again, that will take a long time to develop. Clearly there are political elements that need to come into play before we can talk about a mission being completed or a victory, but we must accept that were we not to have a military presence there, we could go back to handing over a space to those who are fundamentally opposed to our national interest. That would be quite unacceptable, not least given the sacrifices that our service personnel, our allied service personnel and our taxpayers have made so far in Afghanistan.
Many people have talked about the surge in Iraq and whether that could be applied to Afghanistan. We must be careful about this, because in Iraq there was a genuine political purpose behind the surge. General Petraeus saw putting extra troops on the ground as a way of supporting a political impetus, which was to separate out the reconcilable and the irreconcilable—the point that was being made about those who could be brought into the process; a point that the Secretary of State made. What would be the purpose of such a move in Afghanistan at present? We are not at the same juncture; simply putting more troops on the ground would risk inflaming the insurgency without our having anything specific to support. As Frederick Kagan, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise institute and the architect of the Iraqi surge, said, Afghanistan is not Iraq and we cannot just template Iraq's solutions on to Afghanistan's problems. We need to understand that.
For example, Afghanistan has 10 major ethnic groups; there are only two in Iraq. A major part of the Iraqi surge was the creation of the conditions for the Sunni awakening, and the structure and beliefs of Iraq's tribal system allowed that to occur. However, it is very unlikely that pashtunwali, the Pashtun tribal code of honour, would allow that to happen easily in Afghanistan. In the House and outside, we have to be wary about simplistic solutions that apply what happened in one place to another; there is no guarantee that they would necessarily succeed.
If we are to be successful in Afghanistan, we need a clearly defined end state, which we have not had until now. We need realistic benchmarks so that we do not fool ourselves into believing that we are making progress when we are not. The recent National Audit Office report into the Department for International Development was a shot of reality in respect of what has happened there. Above all else, we need realistic expectations. Pretending that we can achieve things quickly does no good to the political case of those of us who believe in our engagement in Afghanistan, and it does no good to the morale of our forces or to public support in this country or those of our allies. Afghanistan is not Iraq; it is about construction, not reconstruction, and that will take time. Noble purposes are all very well, but they have to be allied to realistic time scales. If they are not, things become unsatisfactory and unhelpful.
Richard Benyon (Whip, Whips; Newbury, Conservative)
Does my hon. Friend not feel that, in respect of what was said previously, we need to educate people about a counter-insurgency war such as that in Afghanistan? Such battles are not won as they were in the Falklands, as people who read the media often think. We win one victory when we get a turbine into the Kajaki dam and another when that is connected to 2 million homes. We need to inform people about what we are trying to achieve and to be able to measure that.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
Indeed; my hon. Friend is exactly correct. Having clearly definable benchmarks is essential to show what progress we are making. There are too many simplifications. People mention "talking to the Taliban", but who do they think the Taliban are—a club with a membership? They are a changing number of people who will move around the border and change allegiances and sides at different times. We have to be realistic about what we are dealing with. If any country should understand from its own history that we have to work with what we get, not what we want, if our mission is to succeed, it should be the United Kingdom. We need to consider that.
We have seen success elsewhere. Like the Secretary of State, I have recently returned from Iraq. I wandered around the centre of Basra without body armour or a helmet. We were held up as we approached the city because so many people were going shopping with their families that there was a traffic jam. Such a scene would have been unthinkable a relatively short time ago. It is possible to bring change. All those who were against the intervention in Iraq might want to go to Basra and see what difference that intervention has made. People there now not only have a say in determining the future of their own country and taking control of their own destiny, but live in an infinitely improved security environment. They do not even talk about security as one of the issues; they talk about employment, electricity and water because the terms of debate have fundamentally changed as a consequence of military action. We should remember that whatever people say about more recent events in Basra, the commitment of our armed forces to the coalition of the willing in Iraq has made a change for people in that country. Once in a while, I would like those who were against the war in Iraq to recognise that some good things have now come out of it for the ordinary people there, rather than only wanting to see the downside.
Clearly, our mission in Iraq is changing. During my last visit, I spoke to General Mohammed as well as political figures. The general made it clear that the British period of military operations is coming to an end and that it is time for our troops to come home whenever that is possible. I still think that it would be a profound mistake to produce a timetable for the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, but we can now clearly see that it is going to happen sooner rather than later. It will depend on conditions on the ground and, to some extent, on the incoming American Administration. It is possible that the current overstretch might be diminished, at least in some small way, but that will depend on what decision the Government take on future deployments to Afghanistan.
The Iraqi people find themselves, at least in one respect, more fortunate than ourselves, in that their Government have a fiscal surplus of some $72 billion this year, predicted to be $90 billion next year. It is astonishing that there is no representative from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in Baghdad, because contracts for reconstruction are being, and will be, picked up by the Americans, the Germans, the French and the Russians. Given our commitment to Iraq, it would be unthinkable were we not to have appropriate representation in Baghdad to ensure that British companies get their fair share of the reconstruction contracts. [ Interruption . ] A personal visit from the Secretary of State might indeed be welcomed on both sides of the geographical divide.
One thing that the Secretary of State did not mention—I hope that the Minister will do so when he winds up—was what has happened with Russia. Since our most recent defence debates, we have seen the events in Georgia, where Russian intentions may not be benign, to put it mildly. Russian forces inside the sovereign territory of Georgia could now cut off Caspian oil and gas supplies to the west within hours. We know about Russia's $208 billion dollar military build-up, paid for under the stabilisation fund, and its apparent intentions in the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Arctic. In a defence debate of this nature, we should hear about how the Government perceive what may be an increasing threat from Russia.
Andrew MacKinlay (Thurrock, Labour)
This is in no way to agree with the conduct of Russia, but some of us were bewildered in the summer by the cosy consensus between the Government and the Opposition in persisting with the concept that Georgia could come into NATO without that prejudicing article 5 of the NATO treaty. It seems ludicrous, in terms of our defence, that the Opposition and the Government persist in the idea that that is tenable while maintaining the credibility of article 5, which has been so important to us since the 1940s, and the full protection offered by it. It would devalue that commitment, and we would pay a heavy price if we allowed Georgia to join NATO under those circumstances.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
Entry into NATO has to be agreed by both parties—those who are already in NATO have to give the security guarantee and the incoming country has to fulfil certain legal obligations, not least that any territorial disputes must be resolved. Georgia's entry into NATO would affect how Georgia operates in the region. Membership of NATO does not come automatically—it must be earned. That seems to have been forgotten at the present time.
I want to end with some questions for the Minister about personnel. None of what we have discussed is possible without the brave men and women who make up our armed forces. I thank my friends, Freddie Forsyth, Simon Weston and those who took part in the Conservative party's military covenant commission. I should like to raise three issues of some urgency. The first concerns decompression. The target is that those coming out of theatre should get up to two weeks' decompression time among their colleagues to deal with the consequences of stress and combat before returning to bases in the United Kingdom or back to civilian life if they are in the Territorial Army. I was surprised to discover that civil servants in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who spend time in Iraq get a compulsory two weeks' decompression out of theatre every seven weeks. We are lucky if some of our soldiers are getting much more than 48 hours decompression after a six-month tour. That is not to say that the FCO civil servants are treated wrongly, but it provides some clarity about why there is so much unhappiness about the issue. It is important to talk about decompression because more evidence is emerging about the possible development of long-term problems associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Decompression is an essential means of reducing the temperature for those who have been in theatre. If they are being short-changed for operational reasons, that is not acceptable. We may pay a high, long-term price for what are very small short-term gains. I am sure that the whole House shares my concerns, and I hope that we can have an immediate review of the time given for decompression.
Secondly, the air bridge is a continuing problem that saps morale. We need urgent action and if we cannot have sufficiently robust RAF aircraft to carry out such duties effectively, the Government have a duty to ensure that we get them from somewhere. It is quite unacceptable for servicemen and women to be left for long periods waiting on their leave to return to the United Kingdom.
The third issue is the one highlighted in the press today: hearing loss. I was not going to raise the issue until I saw what the Ministry of Defence had said. Clearly, too many servicemen and women are already not fit for service. If we have a 10 per cent. recorded level of hearing loss that is judged to be moderate to severe, which will prevent personnel from serving in the future, that is a big problem. I would like that matter to be looked at urgently. I regret the statement from the MOD, which stated that
"the majority of hearing impairment cases cannot be directly attributed to deployment".
It sounds like a classic washing of the hands, and it is not sufficient.
Finally, we have talked a lot about our servicemen and women and civilian groups that support them. There is one other group to remember, however, which is our charitable sector. There are many in this country who say, "These things should not be left to charities; the Government should deal with them." I happen to believe that the charitable sector is extraordinarily important because it reminds citizens of their responsibilities to other citizens and does not allow people to abdicate their responsibility on to the state. Help for Heroes, Combat Stress and so many other charities are doing invaluable work, and are thanked too seldom in this country for what they do. The armed forces, families and charities all enable us to have and support the finest services in the world, and at this time of year more than at any other, we should thank them.
Sylvia Heal (Deputy Speaker)
Order. May I remind all hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 12-minute limit on Back-Bench contributions?
Andrew MacKinlay (Thurrock, Labour)
I will be swift in view of the time restrictions, but I would like to raise one point of a historic nature before I move on to Helmand and other contemporary issues.
I have to express some disappointment that the Government did not do more to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the first world war armistice. In the short period that he has held his post, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend Mr. Jones, who has responsibility for veterans, has gone to enormous lengths to remedy that omission, and there is to be a ceremony on
However, as I pointed out when I raised this matter a year and a quarter ago, it is not just about commemoration—other things flow from it. We can remind young people about the important and seminal nature of the world war one conflict: how we went to war with cavalry and emerged with weapons of mass destruction, and how the first, embryonic international courts of justice were established to deal with war crimes, such as the trials in Leipzig. We can remind them of women's suffrage and all the social change that took place. It has been a great missed opportunity. I want to acknowledge the Under-Secretary's initiative and applaud it, but I am disappointed that we did not seize the opportunity, particularly as we want to tell youngsters how important it was and what our armed forces were committed to. Although that war was prosecuted in a sloppy manner by some, the principle on which the UK went into that conflict, and the reason why Sir Edward Grey stood at the Dispatch Box, was a matter of international law. We tend to forget that. The UK got into world war one on a matter of important principle. Its prosecution by generals and others might not have been satisfactory—the carnage was appalling—but the principle was right and the United Kingdom should be proud.
Events such as commemorations help recruitment. They encourage people to think about the armed forces as a career, and we need to do much more about that. I am told—perhaps the Minister will correct me—that 10 per cent. of our Army recruits are from overseas. All are welcome—many of those men and women are most dedicated—but there comes a point when it is neither comfortable nor healthy for a disproportionate number of recruits to come from overseas. A few years ago, I think that the figure was 3 per cent.—there is no sign of the trend abating or reducing. Things that encourage our best young people to join the armed forces should be fostered. I mentioned the loss of the opportunity of commemorating the 90th anniversary of the armistice, but many other events are important.
In the United States, there is pride in uniform. I appreciate that we now encourage our armed forces to wear uniform whenever possible, and I understand why that did not happen in the past 20 years for reasons of combating terrorism, but we need to do far more. In a future debate, perhaps we could consider not merely using our reserve armed forces as ways of filling gaps or of simply bringing in special skills—although that is important—but moving them as units into conflict or peacekeeping situations.
I am proud to have 400 Nepalese Gurkha families in my constituency and I am totally bewildered by the Government's continued stance towards them. Although the matter may be for a Home Office Minister, I believe that the Defence Secretary has an enduring pastoral role to play for those families. I therefore urge him to resolve the problem. The British Government have lost in the courts and public opinion is with the Gurkhas. It is a matter of justice and it is also popular, and I cannot understand why the Government cannot get their head round it. They would be applauded rather than criticised if they acknowledged those people's right to have citizenship here and so on. I ask the Secretary of State to take the matter up with the various relevant Ministers.
Thurrock RAF Association has made representations to me that it is worried about some impediment to getting parcels to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps the Secretary of State or the Minister who responds to the debate can clarify the procedures and protocols, because I understand that they have received representations from RAFA criticising the arrangements and I would like to be able to reassure people that there are no such impediments.
Bob Russell (Shadow Minister, Defence; Colchester, Liberal Democrat)
The most important thing is ensuring that parcels from families get through as a priority. If too many people show good will, especially at this time of year, many of our service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq will not get the family parcels. We need to be careful.
Andrew MacKinlay (Thurrock, Labour)
I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. I asked Ministers, in fairly temperate terms, to clarify the position so that we can reassure people or explain the problems. If there are impediments, can they be overcome?
I will talk about Afghanistan and Helmand province shortly. I know that other hon. Members have experienced the sadness of having to attend a constituent's funeral. Recently I attended the funeral of constituent Nicky Mason of 2 Para, and I want to acknowledge his bravery in the field. He was highly regarded by his fellow soldiers and popular in the community of Aveley. We salute him today. We hope that his sacrifice and that of his colleagues has not been in vain and will produce a better political climate in the region.
The funeral brought home to me my obligations as a Member of Parliament. I say that because I cannot help but feel that a little while ago we as a Parliament failed in our duty. I remember when our green screens said that there was a statement by the Secretary of State for Defence and we came into the Chamber to hear it. I must admit that Helmand was not really on my radar screen, but we were told that we were committing our armed forces to that region. We can say with some pride that the United Kingdom stepped up to the plate in Helmand, but at the time none of us fully envisaged either the scale of the commitment that we were making or the absence of support from other countries. That troubles me a great deal.
This week I asked the Secretary of State in a parliamentary question to indicate which of the 13 districts in Helmand province were under the control of the international forces or the Afghan army. His reply was that we had "presence" in a number of districts, but that was not the question that I asked. I asked which districts we controlled. Sometimes we need to be told the naked truth. The Government have a duty to tell us as a Parliament precisely, as of this afternoon, what we control and what "control" constitutes. Does control of a district mean a flag and a policeman in one of those fort-like places or does it mean something better than that? Some people are not prepared to ask difficult questions, so I repeat my questions to the Secretary of State: what districts do we control, which do the Taliban control and which are indeterminate, and what constitutes "control"?
Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead, Labour)
Some of us think that efforts should be made to reach a political solution. There were rumours that the British were talking to some of the insurgent leaders, but that they had their knuckles wrapped by the Americans for doing so. We know that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has tried to start political talks, but we heard nothing from the Secretary of State about that process. Should something not have been reported to the House?
Andrew MacKinlay (Thurrock, Labour)
In fairness to the Secretary of State, that is a matter of foreign policy. However, we are entitled to know in a defence debate what the military situation is. I fully acknowledge that in large tracts of Afghanistan there is relative stability and normal life—to the extent that there is normal life in that part of the world. However, I am deliberately referring to Helmand province, which is a large territory where the United Kingdom has stepped up to the plate, almost alone it would seem. That is why I feel an obligation as a Member of Parliament to probe on the issue. I am sure that everyone acknowledges that we need some political initiatives in our overall policy towards Afghanistan. Indeed, both the Government and the Opposition have acknowledged that, as do I. I also acknowledge some success in the country as a whole, but Helmand is costing our servicemen and women's lives. Therefore, we have a special obligation.
Reference has been made to NATO. One problem is that UK industry has tried—and to some extent succeeded—persuading the emerging democracies of central Europe that have joined NATO to re-equip their air forces with planes that we wish to sell to them, for perfectly legitimate commercial reasons. However, given those countries' contributions to NATO, they do not need super-duper air forces. Their best contribution could be made by providing some more heavy lift and so on. We need to discuss in the coming period how NATO can have true interoperability and how people can make a real contribution to the alliance, rather than going for a national status symbol. I understand the significance of air forces, but we have tried persuading those countries—and to some extent we have succeeded—to kit themselves out with fighters and other sophisticated and expensive equipment, which frankly do not add to NATO's clout or influence in the world.
Finally, the Opposition spokesman referred to piracy around the world. I am concerned that, for example, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which is an overseas territory, there is an acute problem of people smuggling and refugees, mainly from Haiti. That island Government do not have the resources to control or to police that problem, yet the Royal Navy does not have a permanent presence there. I would have thought that protecting our overseas territories would be core business for our armed forces. We also have an obligation to the population of those territories. Also, out of naked self-interest, we do not want such a burden to emerge in these small territories, because we will eventually have to absorb the resulting illegal immigrants and refugees. I realise that there is a problem of resources, but it should be part of our core business to protect and promote small overseas territories, particularly in relation to illegal smuggling of people, refugees and so on.
I am pleased to have had this opportunity to rehearse these points in the House today. As all other Members have done, I congratulate our armed forces personnel on their dedication, on the courage that they demonstrate and on the skills that they bring to bear in very testing circumstances. I salute them. We, as a Parliament, owe it to them to be more probing into whether we are succeeding. We might not like to hear the news, but if we are not succeeding due to certain deficiencies, it is down to us to vote the moneys and the resources to ensure that those people are fully equipped.
Nick Harvey (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; North Devon, Liberal Democrat)
I start by echoing the words of tribute to the men and women of our armed services at every level, on the front line and at home, and to those who help and support them, those who equip and supply them, and those who look after them when they come back. In particular, I pay tribute to the constituents of my hon. Friend Bob Russell, who have just returned from a gruelling tour of duty in Afghanistan, and to my own constituents, the marines and engineers who have gone out there to take over from them. We should all be very proud of what they are doing, often in very difficult circumstances.
I should also like to welcome the new Secretary of State to his new responsibilities. Like Dr. Fox, I recall shadowing him in his health role some years ago. I was rather surprised when the hon. Member for Woodspring suggested that he expected to find a more bipartisan atmosphere in our debates from now on, but he then went on to surprise me, because I found myself agreeing with much more of his speech than I usually do. It was one of the best speeches he has made on defence. Perhaps I was wrong to think that we would not find bipartisan support for a number of things, because, in fact, we are doing so.
I also pay tribute to the Secretary of State's predecessor. I entirely agree that he was a straight and decent man, who did a difficult job in very trying circumstances. Rumours have been circulating all year that, when a reshuffle came, he wanted to divest himself of his responsibilities. I have no idea whether that is true, but I think that he can look back at the time he spent as Defence Secretary with pride and satisfaction.
For five years, defence policy has been focused on, and to a great extent overshadowed by, our intervention in Iraq. Sometimes to the detriment of our forces, our capabilities and our wider operations, the Government have remained somewhat too steadfast—to my taste—in their involvement in that country. That has had a considerable cost. During the time of our involvement there, we have lost the confidence of many allies and friends around the world, and diverted our attention away from the real problems, not least those in Afghanistan, which predated our involvement in Iraq.
We now have a new Secretary of State in charge, however, and I very much welcome what he said at the weekend, and again in our debate today, about the drawing down of our forces in the region. It may be that our time there is drawing to an end, and if so, I welcome that very much. I know that our troops are currently involved in training the 14th division of the Iraqi army. The previous Secretary of State said in an answer in early September—I think that the new Secretary of State has more or less confirmed this today—that this will be completed early next year. I gather that we are also anticipating handing over the Basra air base by the end of this year.
I very much hope that we can assume that we are coming to the end of our significant engagement and that we have not been given yet another elastic deadline. Questions need to be answered about the draw-down to what I understand will be a few hundred troops remaining. I am particularly keen to understand where they will be and how they will be protected. The Minister of State was asked in the Select Committee on Defence about the minimum scale of forces that are capable of protecting themselves. If we are talking about drawing down to a few hundred, clearly they will not be able to protect themselves.
I think that we have a much more sensible basis on which to build a long-term bilateral partnership with Iraq of the sort that the Secretary of State was defending. I see no problem with, or have any objection to, British expertise continuing to be available as the Iraqi army and nation rebuild themselves. If we want to be friends of Iraq, it is appropriate that we should do that, and the sooner that we bring our skills and expertise to Iraqis in modest numbers and not by dint of keeping a self-protecting force there, the better it will be for Iraq, for our involvement in Afghanistan and for the strain on our resources, manpower and finances. I hope that we are seeing the beginning of our withdrawal from any significant engagement in Iraq.
I appreciate that we will have to wait a little longer to hear the terms of the bilateral deal that will be agreed between our Government and the Iraqi Government beyond
I opposed our involvement in Iraq. To pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Woodspring, I am not aware of anyone who says that our troops have done nothing beneficial in Iraq. It is not my view that they have been in any sense wasting their time there or that they have not contributed something positive to the well-being of the people of Iraq. However, it is a measure of how badly planned the post-war involvement was that a full five and a half years on, we are discussing issues such as the availability of power and water, which in some parts of Iraq are not back to the state that they were in during Saddam's regime. I welcome any progress that we can make, but we should not be in this situation five and a half years on.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
As a matter of interest, the objection of the hon. Gentleman's party was based not on the quality of the planning for the post-conflict scenario, but on their view that we should not have been there in the first place. Had we not been there, the people I met in Basra would not have the improved security there; nor would they be looking forward to some of the material benefits that might accrue as a consequence.
Nick Harvey (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; North Devon, Liberal Democrat)
That is not what I said. The hon. Gentleman is trying to have it both ways. I do not recall that a purpose of invading Iraq was to restore the water supplies. As he well knows, our objection was that it was completely illegal and we were sold a duff prospectus on the purposes of the engagement. However, I honestly do not think that at this stage there is a great deal of purpose to be served by trawling over all that.
Nick Harvey (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; North Devon, Liberal Democrat)
I can see that it is too much for some to resist.
Linda Gilroy (Plymouth, Sutton, Labour)
Does the hon. Gentleman seriously think that having seen off the weapons inspectors, the dictator Saddam Hussein would not have become an even more serious threat to the security in that region at that time and, therefore, to our security at home?
Nick Harvey (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; North Devon, Liberal Democrat)
That was certainly not my assertion, but, as the hon. Lady knows perfectly well, the terms, timing and nature of our involvement in Iraq were issues of profound division at the time, and remain so to this day.
However, attention now turns to Afghanistan. As the Secretary of State observed, there are fundamental problems there, and the position is very complicated. No one ever said that it would be easy, and indeed it will not—it will clearly be a very long haul—but we need to retain a steadfast commitment, and this is by no means a time for faint hearts.
During his short time in office so far, the Secretary of State has already visited both Afghanistan and Iraq, and I welcome what he has said since his return. It is clear that there are complex issues for us to tackle. Our involvement in Afghanistan looks set to last for many years, but I am still not convinced that the general public are entirely clear about why we are there, what our objectives are, or by what yardsticks they can judge the effectiveness of what we are doing there. Their confusion will probably have been increased by remarks such as those of Brigadier Carleton-Smith, although I agree with others that he should not be condemned for what he said, because there was some essential truth in it. As he remarked, we are not going to win this war by military means alone.
Harry Cohen has intervened a couple of times to raise the issue of talking to and negotiating with the Taliban. It is pretty much an open secret that the Afghan Government do it, that the tribal elders do it, that the Pakistanis do it and that we do it, and it is entirely right that we should. The Secretary of State said that it could not possibly be part of the solution for us to hand over any part of power to those who had not laid down arms and who were maintaining the stances that they had taken in the past, and he was entirely right to say that, but there is a world of difference between saying that and saying that we would not be willing to talk to the Taliban.
I remember appearing on the BBC's "Question Time" on the day it emerged that the Major Government had been talking to the IRA. David Dimbleby turned to me and asked, "Are you outraged that it has emerged that the British Government are talking to the IRA?" I replied, "I am not half as outraged as I should have been if it had emerged that they were not doing so." It is entirely logical and right that such dialogues must take place if we hope ever to reach a point at which the opposing sides could be reconciled and made part of a lasting solution.
The Secretary of State was right to say that we could not establish any form of agreement with the Taliban unless and until they agreed to renounce what they had been doing, but we cannot hope to reach that point without engaging in some sort of dialogue with them. I do not know by what means it would take place, or whether it would begin for real now or later; but there is no way we will find a lasting solution unless and until it becomes part of what we are trying to do.
During our last defence debate a couple of weeks ago, I stressed how vital it was for us to send more helicopters to Afghanistan as part of our work there. The Government's statement yesterday about the issue of more protected vehicles was welcome, but I emphasise yet again the need for more helicopters, especially in view of the expected life of the existing helicopter fleet.
We also need to look to the wider region. I should like to know what dialogue has taken place between the British Government and America about American incursions into Pakistani border territories. On Sunday an American drone killed 20 people in Waziristan in Pakistan, and the raids continue. It is surely an irony that the security of Pakistan may now be threatened as our allies step beyond the bounds of the original mandate. I do not seek to minimise the problems that exist in the border territories, but we need to be careful that we are not opening a can of worms in unsettling Pakistan, which is absolutely vital to British interests in that part of the world. We must proceed with enormous care.
The Secretary of State has identified tackling the opium trade as one of our chief objectives, and he is right to do so. Given the scale of heroin addiction in Iran, I should be interested to know whether we have had any discussions with the Iranians about this. It is known to be something about which Iran has enormous concerns. I appreciate that we are significantly at odds with Iran over uranium enrichment and other matters, but it is vital—given that Iran has been involved in the west of Afghanistan—that we should have discussions with it.
On strategy, the hon. Member for Woodspring quite rightly pointed out the folly of continuing to operate on the basis of defence planning assumptions drawn up in the context of 1998. Afghanistan and Iraq cannot be viewed just as add-ons to our general strategic outlook. They have to fit in far more fundamentally to our view of things and what we are trying to do.
The Secretary of State has started to give a lot of thought to his new responsibilities and has identified some of the headline priorities, but before any of the key decisions can be tackled we have to go back to the drawing board over some of the big strategic issues. Some would characterise the decisions that need to be made as a tension between the priorities dictated to us by the wars of today and the longer-term threats that might emerge in other scenarios, where we have to retain a capacity to deal with what might emerge.
Although they did not really do so today, the Conservative Front-Bench team can, when they get the bit between their teeth, wax lyrical on the threats that we might face at various points in the future. I always feel that, rather like the Old Testament, they should not be taken too literally, but neither should they be disregarded. They are absolutely right to say that we cannot concentrate entirely on the priorities of today at the expense of any consideration of these issues, but the purpose of arriving at a defence strategy is to strike a balance between them. I am not content that doing that on the basis of calculations made a decade ago is a sensible way forward.
Mr. Arbuthnot, the Chair of the Select Committee, asked the Secretary of State where the procurement of the new armoured vehicles fits into the FRES programme. The Secretary of State's reply was that the two had nothing to do with one another. One was funded by urgent operational requirements, the other was a long-term plan for the future. This shows precisely the problem that I am trying to illustrate. We cannot view these things in silos, as they all have to be moulded into a defence strategy that guides and governs the decisions that need to be made.
There is a backlog of unpleasant decisions that need to be made, as I am sure the Secretary of State is now only too aware. He has been hinting in the media that it may become necessary for one of the large procurement projects to be cancelled. This will be difficult when some are rooted so firmly in the constituency of the Prime Minister and others are rooted so firmly in the constituency of the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, there are some big decisions that will have to be taken, and it is essential that they are taken in a strategic context. I have read suggestions that the joint strike fighter might be cancelled and have wondered at the sanity of that. The project is absolutely fundamental to my understanding of our procurement strategy.
The biggest problem is the mismatch between the commitments on the one side and the resources on the other. I hope that one of our significant commitments, namely Iraq, is now winding down to a point at which one can begin to get these things back into balance. As we look forward to what the purpose of our armed forces might be, I believe that we will have to look afresh at how we co-operate with our allies. As part of that we must recognise the different amounts of weight that different NATO countries have been pulling. There will have to be an enhanced role for co-operation in defence matters at a European level.
The Secretary of State said—and I had some sympathy with him—that his remarks on this issue were not designed to give rise to the sort of headlines that we saw about there being a European army. Let me make it perfectly clear that I would oppose the creation of a European army; it would be unthinkable for British citizens to sign straight up to a European army that was subject to a European political tier, but that is not at all what is being talked about. However, it is clear that the European members of NATO must pull more weight in the NATO partnership.
Given the economic strength and potential of Europe, European countries have a responsibility to co-operate much more than before, not only on procurement but in a wider sense. There is no need for anyone to be alarmed about this. There are circumstances in which British troops belonging to the British armed services will find themselves operating under either a UN flag or a NATO flag, and there is no reason why, in other circumstances, they should not also operate under Europe's colours. In my view, there is no encroachment on our sovereignty in that. There is, however, a responsibility for there to be more rational planning and co-operation with our European neighbours if we are to pull our weight in the future.
We should not be in splendid, budget-restricted and tired isolation; stronger capabilities, greater co-operation and constructive use of resources could only be of benefit to us, Europe, NATO and the world. I hope very much that, having mapped this out as a way forward, the Secretary of State will give more energy to it and ensure that it becomes a reality in future.
John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan, Labour)
I welcome the opportunity to speak, albeit briefly, in this afternoon's defence debate. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his new appointment, which I think is somewhat inspired—I am sure that prediction will be proved right in future. The fact that this is the second full defence debate in almost as many weeks is a sign of what a powerful influence he will be in the Cabinet; two Thursdays out of the past three or four have been set aside for defence, and I hope that sets a pattern for the future. I also congratulate the Opposition spokesman, Dr. Fox, on giving a well-balanced speech, and I hope it points to what we can expect in future defence debates.
I wish to speak on three defence policy items that I consider to be of major importance: the first is a big defence policy success; the second, unfortunately, is a defence policy failure, which I think could end up being a catastrophic one; and the third is a policy issue that I hope we can resolve this afternoon.
The first issue is defence training. I congratulate the Government on their policy of completely transforming and rationalising defence training across all three services through the defence training rationalisation programme. I was delighted with the Department's statement three weeks ago that phase 2 and phase 3 transformation of technical training—so-called package 1—is on track and progressing well. We should get an investment decision in a few months and the final contracts signed approximately a year after that. This major and radical transformation of training will ensure that British servicemen and women have the best technical training in the world—aeronautical, electro-mechanical engineering, computer science and information technology. People will all be trained under one roof. They will be using 21st century technology and training methods, and they will be the best in the world. However, that is taking some time; 10 years will have passed by the time the scheme is up and running.
We have already been through the same process for the officer corps, at the tri-service training academy for leadership and management training. We on the Select Committee on Defence had the privilege of visiting the defence academy at Shrivenham just the other week, and we saw at first hand the superb training that is being offered to our officers—the best in the world. It has been a huge success and an important part of the defence training rationalisation programme. We look forward to the follow-up, which is the technical training of other ranks being transformed in the same way.
The project is so big that the construction programme alone is on a par with the London Olympic project. It is a 600-acre development programme and something like 4,500 servicemen and women will be trained there at any one time. The construction programme will create almost 2,000 jobs in the local community. The facility will provide not only the best training in the world for our servicemen and women, but because the qualifications will be civilian-recognised, it will provide a skills base for this country in some of the most prized and sought-after skills in the world. Once those men and women have been trained, they will always be in the British economy, and could be called upon in future.
The project will amount to a huge saving in the defence training budget over the next few years. Yes, it is a £12 billion private finance initiative project over the next 25 years, and a complex and very large project on which we are well advanced, but the payback is that it will rationalise the delivery of all training across the services, avoiding duplication and creating huge economies of scale. We will actually save money for investment on the defence front line, which is where we want all the spare money to go.
In the current difficult economic times, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is looking for a public sector project to provide jobs, stability in the economy and investment in training for the future of this country, and to save money, I can think of none better than the defence technical academy at MOD St. Athan. [Hon. Members: "Hooray!"] I can tell that everyone agrees with me, and I would like to place that on record.
I congratulate the Government on their approach to training and their rationalisation programme, but I now wish to raise a subject on which I do not congratulate this Government or previous Governments. It is a huge defence policy failure that could store up serious problems for us in future. We on the Defence Committee have just published our 14th report, on recruitment and training, which draws attention to the problem.
Our policy of recruiting British ethnic minorities into the armed forces has been a complete and utter failure. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the situation is getting worse, not better. As the Defence Committee found, the official statistics tell us that the recruitment of ethnic minorities has risen from a baseline of 1 per cent. in 1999, which is a highly suspect figure, to 6.1 per cent. by January 2008. The problem is that those figures have been fiddled. The MOD counted British ethnic minorities in 1999, but then counted Commonwealth recruits into the armed forces by 2008. Those Commonwealth recruits were already there, but they were not counted in the figure that was given in 1999. The official figure for the recruitment of ethnic minorities in this country's forces is 4.8 per cent., but I must tell the House that the more accurate figure across the three services is about 2.3 per cent.
Why do I think that is a problem? As an ex-servicemen who will always support our armed forces, I am concerned about the effect on their reputation. As the Defence Committee pointed out, our armed forces need to reflect the society that they serve, but a bigger and bigger gap is growing between the armed forces and the society that is out there in the community, and that is dangerous. When I was a serviceman, in the 1960s, the armed forces did represent the society in which we lived—unfortunately, that meant that the forces were homophobic, by and large, class-ridden and overtly racist—but that is not the case in the 21st century. We ignore at our peril the need for the armed forces to reflect the community that they serve.
Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Wycombe, Conservative)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that those efforts to recruit some ethnic minority groups may be damaged by the American incursions into Pakistan that Nick Harvey mentioned?
John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan, Labour)
No, I do not. Unfortunately, we do not have time to go into the details of the whys and the whys not. I merely point out that the United States of America has one of the highest levels of recruitment of ethnic minorities in the world, and that is because it has a proactive policy.
The situation is also dangerous because it restricts this country's ability to recruit and retain military personnel. If the armed forces were colour blind, we would be recruiting 20,000 more men and women into the RAF, Navy and Army, and many of the recruitment and retention problems that this country faces would largely be eradicated. Because the armed forces are not colour blind and we are recruiting only 2 per cent. instead of 10 per cent. from the ethnic minority population—
Kevan Jones (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Defence; North Durham, Labour)
I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend. I have an unfortunate problem in that I have seen this from both sides; that includes tabling amendments to the Select Committee report on this subject. Does he recognise that the report said that one of the problems could be found within those communities themselves, and that we had to address that? I am addressing it now.
John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan, Labour)
In short, that is not the problem we face, because this situation does not occur in other countries. The largest ethnic group who could be recruited are the Afro-Caribbeans, and they do not have the same sort of pressures within their community. In the US, the other ethnic minority groups that we are talking about have the highest recruitment levels, so, clearly, this process is done differently in the US.
Brian Jenkins (Tamworth, Labour)
My hon. Friend has identified a problem, but he has not come up with a solution. Does he feel that the detachment between the military and certain sectors of our community who have no link with and no information about the military is down to schools who do not promote it? Might that be one of the problems? Is the problem that certain sectors of our society do not have the same information on how much they could benefit from a career in the forces?
John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan, Labour)
The growing gap, which is the whole point of my raising this topic, is reflected in the fact that some schools do put up barriers. The reason is that the armed forces are in danger of becoming increasingly isolated within society, and that is a medium to long-term problem. If we do not address it now, we will have problems in the future. It is unfortunate that this is the situation facing us, because it denies many young black men and women the opportunity to escape from some of our inner-city streets and have a second chance in life, in terms of both a career opportunity and training. In other countries, especially the USA, far from not their having that opportunity, it is the principal method used by black youth to get out of the inner-city ghettoes and make their way in life, against all the odds. We are denying our young black men and women the same opportunity.
Linda Gilroy (Plymouth, Sutton, Labour)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the cadets and reserves have a particular role to play in reaching out to those communities and giving people the opportunity to enter the armed services?
John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan, Labour)
I do, indeed, and that possibility should be explored further.
For 10 years those at senior levels of the Government and the military have tried to address this issue, but we have failed. The time has come to put in place within the armed forces—a disciplined, authoritarian, structured organisation—a command responsibility, as they have done in the United States, that recognises that command success will be determined by an ability to recruit from across the community.
Finally, I would like to raise a point about the 200 residents in my constituency who have just been billed for nearly £1,000 in water charges back-dated five years—this just before Christmas. They are predominantly low and modest-income families on the west camp at MOD St. Athan living in the former married quarters—they are now first-time buys for young families. Because of MOD bureaucracy, those people have received bills dating from five years ago that have landed on their doorsteps completely unexpectedly, and I hope that Ministers will waive those payments.
James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire, Conservative)
It is a great pleasure to follow John Smith who, as always, made an excellent speech.
I welcome this debate. Although it can seem to some that such debates come along like buses—three at a time—this is in fact a perfect time as we have a new ministerial team. Earlier, I welcomed the arrival of the two new Under-Secretaries of State for Defence, the hon. Members for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) and for North Durham (Mr. Jones), but I did not welcome the Secretary of State's arrival, which was an oversight. His arrival has been welcomed by the armed forces, because of his defence knowledge and constituency interest. His appointment is a very good thing. I also pay tribute to the Secretary of State's predecessor, Des Browne. From the beginning, when he was faced with the Lynx crash in Basra, which he handled with huge sensitivity, understanding and assiduity, he proved himself to be a good Secretary of State for Defence. We will miss him.
Several hon. Members wish to speak, and I have been treated with great indulgence by your calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker—because of my position, rather than my quality, I think—so I shall make only one point. I shall take a little time to make it, but probably not as much as half of the 12 minutes available to each of us.
In the United Kingdom, the defence world and Europe as a whole, there is a crisis of understanding about defence. People are talking from different viewpoints without listening to each other, or understanding or hearing what other people say. The armed forces say, "We need this piece of equipment. Other armed forces have it. For example, the Americans have had explosive suppressant foam in the wings of their aircraft since the 1960s. If you send us into battle without such equipment, you will put us at an unacceptable risk. We will therefore be faced with the choice of going in under-equipped or of saying no to the Armed Forces Minister. It is against our ethos and training to do that, so faced with the choice of being put at risk, or saying no, we are leaving the armed forces." That is the position that our armed forces say that they find themselves in.
The Treasury says, "Well, what do you want? Do you want a completely unlimited budget? There is nobody—no individual, no Department—that has an unlimited budget. Do you want us, the Treasury, to make your choices for you? Obviously not, and frankly we would feel more accommodating towards you—you would be more persuasive—if you spent the money better that we do give you. We do not understand what the armed forces are asking for in this case."
The industry says, "We would like to understand what the Ministry of Defence is doing, but for the last year at least there has been no real discussion between the Ministry of Defence and industry about what the Ministry is going to do. The Ministry of Defence has been told, first, that there is to be no bad news and, secondly, that there is to be no more money. Those two things are incompatible."
The people of this country say, "We do not understand what you are doing in Afghanistan or Iraq. Although we think that on the whole the armed forces are badly treated, we do not want to pay more money to them if they are carrying out projects that we do not understand or support, particularly if that money is to come from our schools and hospitals in order to prop up a corrupt Government in some country that we have never been to. We do not understand what they are doing."
That crisis of understanding has to be addressed, and it has to be addressed by the new ministerial team. There are people who are to blame for having failed to inspire the public by what we are doing. There are Treasury people who are to blame for treating matters to do with the armed forces as financial, when they are inspirational. A military band cannot be treated as something that can be reduced to pounds, shillings or pence or that can be described in figures. It is a matter of inspiration, and for each band that is cut the military understands that fact but the Treasury does not.
The people are to blame, too, because they have forgotten what Pericles said in the Peloponnesian war—if they ever knew. He said that one cannot have happiness without freedom, and one cannot have freedom without courage. He probably said that in some language other than English, but it is crucial and necessary for the people to remember it as they look forward to demanding that a higher proportion of our gross domestic product should go to defence. It is quite wrong that we spend the lowest proportion of our GDP on defence that we have spent since the early 1930s. If we reduce defence spending to such a level, we invite war. It invites the contempt of our enemies and invites them to believe that we no longer believe in our own values. That is where we are.
It is for the ministerial team to inspire the country with a vision of what we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq, of why we are there and of why we need to support our armed forces. At the moment, that is not happening.
Robert Key (Salisbury, Conservative)
I am delighted to follow my right hon. Friend Mr. Arbuthnot, who has made the most remarkable speech that I have heard in a defence debate for a long time. I would only add that I, too, believe passionately that we should reconnect with our constituents to point out to them that even in these straitened times we need to recognise that our future prosperity, our standard of living and our quality of life all depend on recognising what our freedom stands for. If we are to continue to trade globally with the rest of the world, to import and export goods and services, and to do more than 90 per cent. of it by sea and only a tiny minority by air, we must, as a matter of necessity, still be able to project force around the globe.
We have reached a crossroads, as my right hon. Friend pointed out. We will either be a global force to be reckoned with, or we will not. If we are not, we will fall back on a group of countries that currently call themselves members of NATO, or perhaps on another relationship within the European Union. We cannot have it both ways: either we address the issue of the proportion of our national spending that goes on defence, and increase it—I would like to double it, as I have been saying for many years, to the distress of my party and the disbelief of the Labour party—or we will have to sit back and decline gently over the coming generations.
I believe passionately, however, that we do not really have a choice, because our people demand that their standard of living does not decline. Nor are they willing to see their ideas of what Britain is all about written off. Therefore, as my right hon. Friend so vividly explained, we must give them a vision and a far clearer explanation of what we are doing about defence in the world. We also have to explain that the goods and services that they buy in the shops depend, ultimately, on the freedom to trade globally, on keeping the sea lanes open, and on keeping the security of our shores under constant surveillance, using technology that they are not used to and cannot really understand. How many of our constituents are distressed by what they perceive as the decline of what used to be called Customs and Excise, now Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs? They say, "There aren't any Customs cutters floating around our shores any more." That is history; we now do things differently, and I have to accept that.
People are increasingly concerned about the way in which our defence policy, as applied to our personnel, does not provide the services that our constituents expect. The remarkable reaction right across the United Kingdom to Help for Heroes has made us all sit up and wonder why that extraordinary organisation, which I am proud to say originates from my constituency, has caught the imagination of the British people. It is because the British people have suddenly woken up, and say, "Well, we may not understand what the armed forces are doing, and we don't like seeing on our television screens what they're doing, and what is being done to them in Afghanistan, Iraq or many other parts of the world"—there are, in fact, some 4,000 different units of the British military all around the world—"but we recognise that when they come home, they should expect and receive better."
That is why I am particularly anxious about how we treat returning service personnel, medically and mentally. I salute the progress that the Ministry of Defence has made in addressing those issues. The Defence Committee produced a report earlier this year on how we look after our service personnel and their families, medically. However, we need to go further. We have, of course, visited Headley Court and Combat Stress to see what they do, but there is something else that we need to do: we need to encourage Ministers to provide all the necessary resources, for example to the King's Centre for Military Health Research of King's college, London. It does incredibly good work, which it has been publishing since 2006. However, it still has a long way to go.
There is a remarkable project, which I hope Ministers will continue to support, called the trauma risk management, or TRiM, project for post-conflict trauma, depression and stress training. The system operates as a proactive peer group and mentoring and support system that helps people to identify when those in the services are at risk, and the symptoms that they should recognise. The allocated budget for all stress management training within all the armed forces stands at about £1 million a year, which is not nearly enough. It is easy for me to say that we must spend more, but this is a very important matter, and in view of the anxiety about it, expressed only today in the national press, I hope that Ministers will consider what should be done.
Another issue that we should take as part and parcel of the question of trying to ensure that the public understand more about what it means to serve in Her Majesty's forces is how we treat them with regard to their right to vote. For many years we have been saying that Her Majesty's forces do not have as high a level of voter registration as we think they should, and this month the Electoral Commission has described the way in which our forces are under-registered. It points out that only about two thirds of Her Majesty's forces are registered to vote, and it is running campaigns, which I welcome. I hope that Ministers will be encouraged to work ever more closely with the Electoral Commission to ensure that in the annual campaign that is beginning this month, through unit registration officers and Ministry of Defence publicity, no effort is spared to ensure that our service voters have the service that they deserve. It is also important to recognise that registering as an overseas voter is not always the answer. Rather the answer for all service personnel is to register as service voters because they need register only every three years instead of every year.
Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire, Liberal Democrat)
I understand that, unlike service personnel from other countries such as America, our service personnel do not have the opportunity to vote in a ballot box when they are serving overseas. They feel that having to vote by proxy means that they are effectively denied the democratic rights that those whom they are fighting alongside are granted. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should look into what appears to be an injustice?
Robert Key (Salisbury, Conservative)
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has popped into our debate, which has been very important indeed. [Laughter.] Seriously, I am delighted that he is here. But it is not a question of how our service personnel vote, but of how they get on to the register. The voting that is recommended is by proxy. The Electoral Commission, the Ministry of Defence and my constituents in the armed services say that that is the best way. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point.
Another matter on which I want, unashamedly, to press Ministers concerns the future of land forces headquarters. When it was mooted some years ago now that the Army should move its land headquarters from Erskine barracks in Wilton, which also happens to be in my constituency, to redundant buildings in Andover, there was much sucking of teeth, as the Minister would imagine. It was made plain from the start that the British Army land headquarters should be somewhere special, somewhere superb, somewhere that could be an expression of all that is best about the military tradition. Therefore, given that the headquarters land was in premises that had been taken over from the old southern command formed in the second world war and in buildings that were incrementally added to and are now pretty tatty, it was considered appropriate to move into new buildings—not over-the-top buildings; nothing approaching the grandeur and luxury of the Ministry of Defence main building; nothing like that for the people who do the fighting for our country, oh no. But there was at least the assurance that the new premises would be purpose built and appropriate. Not a bit of it. In a parliamentary answer last week, it was finally decided that the headquarters should be in the old buildings in Andover. They would be tarted up a bit with the odd lick of paint and bit of new carpeting here and there, no doubt, and that is fine, but it is a great disappointment. I share the Army's disappointment at the way in which this aspiration for something visionary for the future of the headquarters is now no more.
I should also like to draw the attention of the House to the problems that arise when military establishments are disposed of. That issue interfaces with domestic policy just as importantly as it does with defence policy. In the case of Erskine barracks, it means moving out 1,200 jobs and the military eventually vacating a large site, which will be sold. There is a disjunction between the Ministry of Defence and the civilian authorities. Only yesterday I spoke to officers in my planning authority who are working happily, closely and harmoniously with Ministry of Defence officials in what is called the Wilton taskforce, which is led by the Defence Estates. The problem is a lack of certainty and a fuzziness about the whole thing. Above all, Defence Estates has no consistent point of contact with the planning authority at a time when the planning authority is changing from a district council and county council to one unitary authority; I would have thought it in the interests of the Ministry of Defence that there should be continuity. At Defence Estates there is no consistent person with whom the planning officers can talk, at a time when they have to reinvent the existing local plan, which will expire, and when a process is in train for setting up a new plan.
Such issues do not sound like grand national defence policy but they are important to the morale of the people from all three services in Afghanistan, Iraq and all around the rest of the world. They need to know that we are at least looking after their domestic and administrative interests and ensuring that they can be proud of the offices in which they work and the services that we provide. In that way, they can be part of a democratic process that maintains their freedom and our freedom.
Linda Gilroy (Plymouth, Sutton, Labour)
It is only three weeks since our last defence debate, during which the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend Mr. Jones, said that there was no equivocation about the Government's commitment to Devonport. I make no apology for beginning with some local issues, although I want to take up some of the points made by the two previous speakers, with whom I have the honour of serving on the Defence Committee.
I suspect that in the coming weeks redundancies at Devonport Royal Dockyard will be announced. The redundancies have been spoken of for about three years. Given that the 24/7 media tend to accentuate every story by repeating it almost every quarter of an hour, sometimes for several days, the fact that the redundancies have been expected for such a long time has tended to make it sound as if they are happening over and again. Nevertheless, when they come, they will, of course, be a source of deep regret and play into the ongoing concerns of my constituents.
Earlier this afternoon, my hon. Friend Alison Seabeck and I discussed the death by a thousand cuts of Devonport naval base and dockyard with the regional Minister. [Interruption.] I see my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces sitting, as always, with great patience as he hears that such stories are ongoing. We know that Bulwark, Albion and Westminster will keep our workers in the dockyard busy for several years and that there was a huge £150 million investment to enable the important Astute submarine maintenance work in Devonport to continue.
There are, of course, peaks in the sort of work that is undertaken at our dockyard, and they are associated with the intense work on the submarines. Obviously, those peaks occur alongside the troughs in between. Filling those troughs is very important to the people who earn their living through this work. In recent weeks, Babcock Marine decided that it would no longer continue with work on some prestigious luxury boats that had been part of the in-fill work that kept the expert skills of the people who work on the submarines honed.
Yesterday, following my question at Prime Minister's Question Time, I was pleased to hear the announcement about the £700-million vehicles programme, part of which will be for further purchases of the Jackal vehicle—a great success story that we have talked about in previous debates. The programme will not automatically come to Devonport, but I cannot imagine that anywhere else is as well positioned to compete for it. When we met my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces a few months ago, he assured us that he would press to obtain the clarity to which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred when he said that he hoped soon to make some important procurement announcements.
There is often confusion between the roles of Devonport dockyard and the naval base. Of course, the prospects of both are closely tied together. Last week, I was pleased to be able to attend, as part of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, the staff course at Shrivenham defence academy, where for three days we discussed maritime policy and doctrine alongside officers who are on a year-long course preparatory to taking on their first command posts. That helped me to get a deeper and broader picture of the range of tasks and the flexibility of the role of the Royal Navy, and the centrality of amphibious warfare, for which we hope to become the centre of excellence in Devonport.
Mr. Arbuthnot, who chairs the Defence Committee, referred to a crisis of understanding. One of the things that I gained a deeper understanding of was exactly what people mean when they refer to sea blindness and maritime blindness. That operates on several levels, one of which relates to the general public.
When our deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq are shown on television, they appear broadly to be land deployments to which the Navy is not at all central, so it ends up being sidelined. Nothing could be further from the truth, but that puts at risk its interests in relation to all the tensions involved in the defence budget. In Defence questions on Monday, I requested information about the number of Royal Navy personnel who are currently deployed in Afghanistan. The answer will probably come as quite a surprise.
In the battle of arguments between land, air and sea forces for different procurement programmes, the Royal Navy is put in a peculiar position whereby the centrality of its role in our joint expeditionary force capabilities becomes lost. My experience last week suggests that all the platforms together, including the carriers and the amphibious vessels, are there to project, support and protect our armed forces—there could be nothing more central to what we need to do to meet the risks of today and tomorrow.
Various hon. Members referred to the future carrier, which will enhance that amphibious capability to project, support and protect as a central plank of the expeditionary force that we need to deal with uncertain future threats. Some have argued that we need a White Paper to bring all this together. In addition to the fact that that would delay things, which would be dangerous, I understand that the basic assumptions underpinning the last White Paper—the strategic defence review—have been reviewed and found to hold true. There is a case to clarify and update what the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire referred to as a crisis of understanding. I hope that some means of drawing on recent important studies can be found.
I want to mention two further issues. First, I acknowledge the work in the report of the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend Mr. Davies, on national recognition, and the Government response, which, among other things, confirms that we will have the first British armed forces and veterans day on
Secondly, I particularly welcome the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, who this morning welcomed two remarkable veterans—two of the 50 veterans who have had life-size portraits painted by local artist Peter Blackler, telling the story from the first world war to the most recent deployments. I hope that a role can be found for that sort of project. I welcome the fact that prints of the two portraits are to be hung in the Ministry of Defence. Such projects, especially when they involve young people, are an important part of how we help our communities that are less familiar with the armed services than those represented by most of us here today to understand the role of yesterday's and today's armed forces, and the needs of veterans of more recent deployments.
I conclude with an issue arising from the Government's response to the recent report of the Defence Committee on recruitment and retention. I was particularly disappointed by the Government's response to our recommendation that they should, as soon as possible, carefully consider dealing with the differing retirement ages in the armed services, which has a particular effect on the senior ranks. Because people must have two years' remaining service in order be able to apply for some positions, those who have an earlier retirement date—mostly Marines, some of whom have the most important experience from recent deployment—cannot apply for posts that are open to all services. That cannot be right. It is not sensible to deny individuals that opportunity, and it is not sensible for the MOD not to have the benefit of those senior officers' experience.
Bob Russell (Shadow Minister, Defence; Colchester, Liberal Democrat)
This morning in Colchester there was a regimental service for 2 Para. The final members returned on Sunday, and tribute was paid to the nine members of the battalion, along with those attached to it—another four—who died. The 16 Air Assault Brigade suffered 32 deaths and 170 serious injuries. I know that the House will rejoice for those who returned and feel great sadness for those who did not.
I am concerned about the future of the British Army. To discover from parliamentary questions that 10 per cent. of the British Army is not British is worrying. At some point, we need to address the reason for young British men and women's not joining Her Majesty's armed forces in the numbers that we would wish. Clearly, it has something to do with the attraction—financial and otherwise—of the package, which needs re-examining. However, I heard at a function yesterday that 37 per cent. of recruits drop out before they can become fully fledged members of Her Majesty's armed forces. That says something about the physical fitness, determination and aspirations of our young people. It is little wonder that there is a recruitment problem if many of those who join do not make it.
Let us consider retention. I pay tribute to the Government for the new barracks that have been provided in my constituency and elsewhere. I am not a fan of the private finance initiative, but Merville barracks, with their accommodation for the single soldier, are a great success. However, the accommodation for those in married quarters is deplorable. The Secretary of State mentioned investment—I believe that the figure was £8 billion—over the next few years. I seek clarification, but I am sure that a large chunk of that is rent for properties that the Ministry of Defence once owned and that the previous Government sold off at ludicrously low prices. In the past 10 years, the rent paid for properties that were once owned is less than what the Conservative Government got in capital receipts.
The story gets worse. I ask the Minister to confirm that the investment in married quarters is from the public purse to private properties, enhancing even further the value of houses that Annington Homes owns. When it sells them off, at a thumping great profit, the public purse has enhanced their value and increased that company's profits. That cannot be right, and I hope that one day a Conservative Member will have the grace to admit that the public were ripped off in that privatisation and that our military families are suffering as a consequence. In my constituency, more than 200 Army houses stand empty, for which the public purse pays approximately £700,000 a year. That is a waste and an absolute disgrace.
For the married soldier, his children's education is of the greatest importance. I urge the Government to examine closely the Defence Committee's excellent recent report and to look back to the Adjournment debate that I secured on the subject almost a decade ago. The lessons that should have been learned then have still not been acted upon.
I congratulate the Government on today's written statement on the inquests and on trying to speed up the process. I wonder whether the Minister can tell us a little more about the progress in the defence inquests unit. The written statement suggests that things are moving, but can the Minister give us any idea of when the process of tackling the backlog will be completed?
Andrew Mackinlay referred to the Gurkhas. In case hon. Members did not know, I can report that the Select Committee on Home Affairs will hold a special one-day hearing on Tuesday. I hope that the Committee will recommend that the Government follow both the spirit and the legal interpretation of the High Court decision, which is that Gurkhas who retired before 1997 should be allowed to live in this country should they so wish. The Government made the right move in allowing Gurkhas retiring after 1997 and thereafter to do so, so the principle has been accepted. One hopes that the Government will now go further and accept the spirit of that ruling. Also, there is a ten-minute Bill dealing with the issue before the House, which, I can modestly say, I introduced. I hope that the sentiments behind that Bill will find their way into the next Queen's Speech.
I realise that many other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall conclude. I, too, pay tribute to the Royal British Legion and all the other charities involved in providing additional help and encouragement. I passionately believe that we need that community involvement throughout the country, so that there is a feeling of ownership and a feeling that people have something to contribute. We are all wearing poppies as a visible sign of that. I have no more to add and I appreciate that others wish to speak, so I conclude on that point.
Ann Winterton (Congleton, Conservative)
I too shall try to be brief, because I know that so many others wish to contribute to this reasonably wide-ranging defence debate.
In spite of the current economic difficulties, now is not the time to cut the military budget, especially when times are so uncertain and when the very stability of nations and the civilised western world is being called into question. With the recession and so much of the budget already committed for future military projects, even if we take into account yesterday's very welcome news of the £700 million protected mobility project, my biggest fear is that the Army will lose out. Yet the Army is the very service with the hard-won experience and expertise that the UK needs most, if we bear in mind the commitments that the Government have made in committing our forces to two war zones.
I regret that I was unable to be present yesterday to listen to—or, even better, to contribute to—the debate in Westminster Hall on "Government strategy and objectives in Afghanistan". Having read Hansard this morning, I support the contribution made to that debate by my hon. Friend Mr. Ellwood, who has first-hand experience of the problems faced there. I have made the point before that I do not believe that we will succeed in Afghanistan while security, reconstruction and development fall under two commands. The whole project should be under one command, preferably that of the Army, for success to be achieved. If the objective is not achieved, the overstretched and under-resourced military will be placed in an impossible position, with, I regret to say, further loss of life.
I have always given credit where credit is due to those responsible for transforming the equipment and fighting ability of the Army. As in the past, I commend those responsible for the introduction of the Talisman project, including the Buffalo mine-clearing vehicle. I first raised the issue in the House exactly three years ago, so it is gratifying to know that minds in the MOD have been changed in the meantime on the usefulness and life-saving potential of the Buffalo.
However, I was intrigued to read a report today by the director of equipment capability, who said:
"The Talisman system is based around three vehicles"—
the Mastiff, which we know about, the Buffalo, which I have mentioned, and the high-mobility engineer excavator, which I understand is to be built by JCB. However, what has happened to the Caterpillar DV104 armoured heavy wheeled tractors, 25 of which were procured at a cost of £14 million, but which are now being sold for less than £4.5 million? I believe that six of them were delivered as recently as 2001, and that they remain unused. I would have thought that those vehicles could be of some use to the Government in Afghanistan, for mine clearing, road building—you name it. My hon. Friend Robert Key mentioned that he would like to spend twice as much on defence—as, indeed, we all would—but we have to ask where the wastage is occurring, and whether that money would be better spent on the vehicles that our armed services now need.
One of the areas in which the Ministry of Defence is most uncommitted at present is the category of medium-weight vehicles. I appreciate that they are part of the FRES package, which was mentioned by the Chairman of the Select Committee earlier, and I admit to having been critical in the past about the original concept. However, the Mastiff and Ridgeback design, which involves blast deflection rather than blast absorption, must be supplemented by more vehicles of that type. The Army needs a medium-weight vehicle that is ready to combat the difficulties that it could face from disorder in parts of the world as a result of the present worldwide financial and economic difficulties, and the terrorist threat that might follow in its wake.
Another need crying out for urgent attention is the provision of helicopters. This has also been mentioned earlier in the debate. I appreciate that, with the recession and the need to reduce unemployment, it will be tempting for the Government to insist on a home-grown product. We should, however, never deny our forces the helicopter capability that they urgently need, and which can be purchased off the shelf, even second hand. There are helicopters available that already have a proven track record in theatre.
The Royal Navy will have its two carriers, although whether there will be any aircraft to go on them is another matter. It will also have the Type 45 destroyers and the Astute submarines. The Royal Air Force has its Eurofighter and, in future, it will have the A400M airlift aircraft. But where is the ring-fenced finance for the key element of the future Army structure, which was based on the medium-weight vehicle?
I mean no disrespect to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, which are both excellent in the roles that they undertake, when I say that it is the Army that is at present bearing the brunt of operations in two theatres, one of which is particularly difficult. I trust, therefore, that the Minister and Her Majesty's Opposition will make an unequivocal commitment to seeing the future Army structure through, so that, at the very least, the Army has the ability to fulfil its present role, to respond whenever it is called upon to keep order and stability throughout the world, and to defend the best interests of the United Kingdom.
In what we all recognise will be a tight military financial budget, the last thing that the nation would expect is for the Army proportionately to come near the bottom of the available funding league, while being expected to continue to carry the greatest burden. The British people know what sacrifices it has already made, and continues to make. They salute the courage and determination of our fighting forces, supported as they are by their families and friends, to whom we are also grateful.
Adam Holloway (Gravesham, Conservative)
I have been so impressed by the brevity of some of the speeches I have heard today that it has rendered me almost unable to speak. Members will be relieved to hear, therefore, that I am going to throw away the speech that I had prepared and will just make a couple of points. We need to consider having some sort of defence policy, and I would have spoken about this at much greater length if my voice were not in this condition.
Before we pat ourselves on the back too much about Iraq, let us remember that the biggest single consequence of the invasion of that country is that, in the minds of hundreds of millions of people in the middle east, a crazed extremist called Osama bin Laden asserted that the Muslim umma was under attack by western countries that wanted to cause problems in the middle east. To my mind, our invasion of that country was completely unnecessary and, for hundreds of millions of people, it has given his words resonance. That is going to be the most lasting consequence of our engagement in Iraq.
We need also a defence policy that will stop us having another strategic failure after Iraq in Afghanistan. I went to Afghanistan a couple of weeks ago with my right hon. Friend David Davis and there is a considerable amount of disillusion about the situation there. At the moment, we are certainly not winning—and I could put it another way if the House wanted me to. Furthermore, by focusing almost exclusively on the military effect, we are in danger of losing what has become known as the global war on terror. The consequences of all that are enormously seriously.
I shall not bang on, but I should like to read what someone said in 1850 about Britain's engagement in the first Afghan war; it applies equally to the whole global war on terror. John Kaye said:
"Throughout the entire period of British connection with Afghanistan a strange moral blindness clouded the vision of our statesmen: they saw only the natural, inevitable results of their own measures—and forgot that those measures were the dragon's teeth from which sprang-up armed men."
Angus Robertson (Parliamentary Leader (Westminster Group); Moray, Scottish National Party)
It is an honour to follow Mr. Holloway. I am only sorry that his voice was failing him, because he was making a powerful argument. I look forward to the next opportunity to hear what he has to say in greater detail.
I am pleased to take part in the debate. Through the Minister of State, I want to give a warm welcome on behalf of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru to his new colleagues in the Ministry of Defence team. I also want to put on the record a genuine and warm tribute to the Secretary of State's predecessor, Des Browne. Those who understand Scottish politics know that it is a pretty competitive field between my party and his, not least because we won his seat last year in the Scottish Parliament elections. However, I always had a straight and helpful information flow in my relationship with him, which is important bearing in mind that I represent the largest group of service personnel in Scotland, with both RAF Kinloss and RAF Lossiemouth in the Moray constituency, and that there is a strong Army tradition with the Highlanders and other regiments such as the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. For that reason, it is not a surprise that the largest constituency veterans day event in 2008 was in Moray.
It is important to reflect on what the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Dr. Fox, said about support for the troops. We should put it on the record, as Nick Harvey did, that support for our troops cuts across parties and our opinions on the operations on which they are sent. There are those of us who have passionately opposed the likes of the Iraq mission who will not avoid—nor would we ever seek to avoid—giving our unwavering support to our troops and the work that they do.
The four substantial issues that I want to raise are Iraq, Afghanistan, matters relating to veterans' affairs and Trident. I had the good fortune last week to visit the Iraq mission in Basra and spent a lot of valuable time with the British armed forces there. I was briefed about their work. Having seen what I think is universally acknowledged to be a successful transitional operation involving UK military officers advising Iraqi opposite numbers in the 14th division, I am glad to be able to put it on the record that our armed forces are doing tremendous work. The more who know about it, the better. I am pleased to report back to those hon. Members who have not had the opportunity to go to Iraq to see the work of our armed forces that it is extremely effective. However, I left with one very big concern relating to civilian reconstruction.
Many people are working extremely hard in the provincial reconstruction teams, not least the local team leader Keith MacKiggan, who, with officers from the Royal Navy and colleagues from the Netherlands and elsewhere, is helping the municipal authorities—which, sadly, are extremely corrupt and ineffective—to re-establish key services such as water and electricity supply, sewerage, and rubbish disposal. It concerned me that one of the most senior officers briefing us, who had served around the world, described the living conditions in large parts of Basra city, notably al-Hayyaniyah, as the worst that he had experienced anywhere at any time. It concerns me—notwithstanding my wish to see UK armed forces withdrawn from Iraq as quickly as possible—that part of the UK legacy will unfortunately be a continuation of that intolerable situation. I would welcome anything that the ministerial team can do to encourage their colleagues in the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office to ensure that those problems are overcome.
One of the great advantages of such visits—in this case it was organised very ably by Captain Helen Falconer—was that we had the opportunity to speak to service personnel of all ranks from throughout the United Kingdom. As one would expect, as there are so many service personnel from Moray, I met a lot of them in Basra. The one message that I received consistently was that they are concerned about the time that it takes them to travel home on leave and that that time is effectively deducted from their overall leave period. Young men from Buckie and Orkney, serving with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and the Highlanders, explained that they were given 14 days' leave from intense service on the front, and that it took them three days to travel home and three to travel back, effectively halving their leave time. I do not consider that acceptable, and I hope that the Ministry of Defence will re-examine its rules pertaining to the calculation of travel time for our serving personnel.
Let me now turn to the subject of Afghanistan, not least because of the biggest single loss of life among the UK armed forces there. I pay tribute to the 14 personnel who died aboard Nimrod XV230, which was based at RAF Kinloss, and to their families. I was pleased to receive the Secretary of State's assurances, in reply to an intervention from me at the beginning of the debate, about the serviceability of the Nimrod fleet as well as the maintaining of the safety focus, which is extremely important. I shall return to that later—I hope that the Minister of State shares my concern about some ongoing serviceability issues—but I first want to say something about the broader aspects of the Afghanistan mission.
We need to look closely at our current position, as other countries are doing. I understand that the United States national intelligence estimate on Afghanistan, prepared by the United States 16 intelligence agencies, is set to highlight what they describe as harsh conclusions to the current strategy. It seems to me that we have limited breathing space for a major rethink over the winter months, when fighting subsides and a new United States President reviews his options. It is our brave troops who are literally on the front lines as the situation deteriorates. The Taliban have regrouped, the heroin trade is flourishing, and we are backing a Government with significant corruption problems. Meanwhile, too many ordinary Afghans are seeing precious little reconstruction and development,
It should be obvious to anyone with even a cursory understanding of Afghan history that this is a recipe for disaster. We need a major rethink now. Sadly, the United Kingdom misspent most of the opportunity that it had to make progress in Afghanistan by becoming embroiled in Iraq. The SNP and Plaid Cymru believe that the time has come to look at all the options before it is too late.
My time is running down, but there are two wider points that I want to make that are important. Defence policy, from our perspective, is sadly still decided in this place, but many of the attendant support mechanisms and the charity sector dealing with military matters are devolved or self-standing. That is visible by those of us who have decided to wear Scottish poppies; some may not be aware that they are doing so. I am pleased that colleagues from England are supporting Poppyscotland here today.
I am pleased also that one of the first acts of the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, Mr. Jones, who is responsible for veterans in the UK Defence Ministry, was to travel to Edinburgh last week to meet Stewart Maxwell, the SNP Minister in the Scottish Government with responsibility for such matters. I am pleased that the UK Minister was able to learn about the tremendous progress that has been made in the past 18 months. For the first time in Scotland since devolution we have a Scottish Government who have set out a programme for assisting veterans across Scotland. There has been a whole series of improvements to the situation inherited from the Labour and Liberal Democrat Administration in Scotland who, sadly, did not have such a focused policy.
My last point is about Trident. The Secretary of State was absolutely right to say that one of the universal principles that guide the policy perspectives of anyone in a democracy is that of standards of democracy and consent. I found it slightly jarring to contrast those comments with one of his first visits in post to Faslane, an excellent facility that will be a tremendous base for conventional naval forces in Scotland. The Secretary of State chose to travel to Faslane and to criticise those of us who do not want Scotland to be home to a system of weapons of mass destruction. It is not just the SNP that believes that; the Scottish Churches, the Scottish TUC, the majority of voters and the majority of Labour voters in Scotland believe it. I hope that the Secretary of State, who is not present now, takes the opportunity to reflect on the fact that when he talks about democratic consent he should apply that to public opinion in Scotland.
We are debating defence matters in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday. It is important for all those servicemen and women who may be watching or reading what we discuss today that they understand that our support for them is not dependent on our support of Government policy or on the constitutional arrangements within the UK. The most important message to all our servicemen and women, and to all the charities that support them and their families, is that we salute them all.
Bernard Jenkin (North Essex, Conservative)
We respect the Scottish National party's respect for our armed service men and women. We have rather less respect for its defence policy. I seem to recall that it wanted the economic policy of Iceland until fairly recently; perhaps they want a similar defence policy for Scotland. I do not think that the Scottish people, on reflection, would choose that.
I dedicate my remarks to 2 Para, who are holding their service of remembrance for fallen comrades today in Colchester.
The first issue we have to face is that the Government no longer have a defence policy. The writing was on the wall for years. The mismatch between commitments and resources has become progressively worse. The publication of the national security strategy in March marked a tipping point. It stated the Government's determination to
"shift the overall balance of defence procurement towards support of current operations".
That was an implicit admission that, after the 2008 three-year spending review, the MOD could no longer pretend to make ends meet. The Government can no longer maintain all the current commitments alongside the maintenance of the capabilities set out in the strategic defence review to keep the UK at the top table of military nations in the future. The Government's defence policy is collapsing. This follows the 10 years since the SDR, during which the armed forces have been increasingly underfunded, leaving an ever-widening gap which can be bridged only by continuing the run-down of manpower and extending the delays in orders for new equipment—with all the extra costs involved in that—and by the cancellation of training not directly relevant to the present counter-insurgency campaigns.
The armed forces have just to keep making do, and they do so brilliantly, with the prowess, skill at arms, bravery and dignity that is their hallmark. However, they have been operating beyond the Ministry of Defence's defence planning assumptions for a period longer than the second world war. Such sustained overstretch means that, for example, half the new British Army officers deployed on operations have never done their live fire and manoeuvre exercise at the BATUS—British Army training unit Suffield—training area in Canada, which used to be a prerequisite. It also means that the term "pinch point trades", which used to apply to a few specialist jobs in the services where there was a shortage of trained people, is now applied to the infantry as a whole. In order to meet the Government's own targets for concurrency—that is, maintaining harmony guidelines—the number of infantry battalions would have to be increased by 10, from 39 to 49.
Overstretch has been a deliberate Government policy; they have consciously run a foreign policy dependent upon the force of arms whose ambitions have outstripped the sustainable capability of the armed forces. Moreover, that looks set to continue. Whatever capacity is withdrawn from Iraq over the coming months looks likely to be almost immediately redeployed in Afghanistan as part of a US-led military surge. I do not necessarily oppose that policy, and I have no doubt that the armed forces can continue to deliver, but only in the short term, as the Chief of the Defence Staff himself has said. This sustained period of overstretch is having dire consequences, which we in Parliament, who are elected to be guardians of the long-term national interest and the welfare of those who would give their lives for us, should regard as completely unacceptable.
The first consequence is military. I have been advised that the long-term attrition on people and equipment means that the MOD now privately estimates that even if it were to withdraw from all current operations immediately, the armed forces could not fully recuperate before at least 2017. That means that we are close to breaking the Army—a notion introduced to the debate on defence not by an Opposition MP, but by the Chief of the General Staff. The same applies in different ways to the other two services.
The second consequence is the human reality of this military exhaustion. Why should men and women fight and risk their lives? They do so because they believe in what they are asked to fight for, and they believe that their country will look after them and those they love. I have looked into the faces of exhausted helicopter pilots, listened to soldiers back home who are haunted by their experiences, heard sailors who have cancelled their leave or their training and left their families to be with their ship on operations, and shared the grief with bereaved families. We must not take it for granted that the men and women of the armed forces will always be there when we need them. The steady flow of those leaving early is testimony to the strain on them, yet it has become an insidious part of the Government's defence policy consciously and cynically to exploit the extraordinary good will and resilience of these men and women. It cannot go on for much longer. I appreciate that the Government have begun to address questions around the military covenant, but we should keep reminding ourselves that this aspect of their exploitation of the good will of our servicemen and women is completely morally indefensible.
There is a third consequence, which is yet more serious and profound. The national security strategy and the Secretary of State's hint to The Sunday Times that a big programme would have to be cut both demonstrate that there is now a deliberate act to compromise our nation's long-term security as defined by the SDR, which set out all the essential things we need, simply for lack for funds. The terrible dilemma facing MOD officials and service chiefs is what to do. What should they cut to keep the show on the road in Afghanistan? Should it be the carriers and joint strike fighters, with their global power projection? If we are to have them, are they not simply crowding out other vital programmes? The Minister shakes his head, but he knows that that is the question that faces policy makers in his Department.
What about cutting the Astute submarines, which are vital for the protection of an ocean-going navy? Could the Government possibly cut more surface ships, or Future Lynx, the new workhorse helicopter for all three services? Even if they cut 70 of the Future Lynx—no number is yet confirmed—the number of helicopters in the UK armed forces will be fewer than half the current figure by 2020.
The difficulty is that coherent defence policy does not stand alone but must be part of the UK's overall foreign and security strategy. The current self-deceits, inconsistencies and financial constraints make it impossible to frame a rational long-term policy. We need a Prime Minister to decide what sort of country we realistically want to be, and what role we can realistically afford to play in the world.
We are stretched across the middle east and central Asia with long-term commitments, like a colonial power, but with little public understanding of why we are there and paying so much in money and sacrifice. Are Iraq and Afghanistan to be the last gasp of the so-called ethical foreign policy? We need a defence review to resolve the painful dilemma that is being lived out by our armed servicemen and women, but before that the Government must forge a new foreign and security strategy to reflect a coherent view of the UK's role in the world—the world as it is, not as some would wish it to be.
It is Labour's combination of over-ambition, naivety and lack of funding that has led us to this pass. We remember the extraordinary Chicago speech that the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, gave in the heat of the Kosovo crisis. He proclaimed that his actions were
"guided by a subtle blend of mutual self interest and moral purpose".
He added, casually, that
"in the end, values and interest merge".
I kid you not. How did anyone take such amateur philosophising seriously? How could any serious foreign policy practitioner distil any principle from such meaningless cant?
That attempt to overlay our foreign policy with a spurious moral authority that it cannot possess has had disastrous results. We have tangled our military capabilities with legal complexities that result in terrorists being held prisoner in Basra in better conditions and safer accommodation than we have been able to provide for our own servicemen. [ Interruption.] The Minister says that that is rubbish, but I saw it with my own eyes. The soldiers in Basra live in soft accommodation; the prisoners are in hardened accommodation.
The result is the Royal Navy being instructed not to capture pirates off the horn of Africa for fear that they might claim asylum. The Government gave the Department for International Development a remit that set it up as though it were a state within the state, apparently answering to an altogether higher moral authority than the mere interests of the nation that pays its bills. Our armed forces, who have the responsibility for winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan, have to wade through swathes of bureaucracy to access a few million pounds for quick-impact projects, while DFID squanders billions on the corrupt Government in Kabul in pursuit of probably unattainable, and certainly less urgent, political objectives.
Whatever we have to do in the short term we must do, but in the long term we need a new defence policy reflecting realism about the world and about what we can do, and based on the interests of the UK and the likely threats to the safety and welfare of our people over the next 20 or 30 years. We face a perfect storm of modern threats: non-state terrorism and insurgency, Muslim extremism, weapons proliferation, Iran, the rise of nationalism, Russia, the new threats arising from climate change, population growth and food and energy scarcity. All those are now set against the background of an unprecedented global financial crisis, which will have economic and strategic consequences that are as yet hard to assess.
Ditching the chaos of the ethical foreign policy is a pitch not for amorality but for moral realism. Of course we have obligations to the wider world, but we must surely recognise that our first duty as parliamentarians is to secure the safety and well-being of the fortunate people born, or who have come to live, in these free islands. That includes the need for a defence policy that preserves our safety, maintains our influence and honours our obligations to our servicemen and women and their families, and for which we must therefore be prepared to pay.
Alan Haselhurst (Deputy Speaker)
Order. Four hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye before the wind-ups. I cannot reduce the time limit without giving any notice, because to do so would be unfair. Seven and a half minutes for each contribution would allow all hon. Members to get in, if there is a mood of co-operation.
Richard Benyon (Whip, Whips; Newbury, Conservative)
I shall seek to abide by that, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
It is excellent that the words "Help for Heroes" have been mentioned on a number of occasions in tonight's debate. A year into the life of that charity, of which it is an honour to be a trustee, I wish to pay tribute not just to those who started it up, particularly its inspirational chief executive, Bryn Parry, and to the wonderful army of volunteers, not just those in Wiltshire, who have kept the office going and who have fielded all the requests and the enormous sums that have arrived there from all around the country, but to the fundraisers all around the country, who have worked so hard. It has been an inspiration to be involved.
Interestingly, as has been said in the debate, people in Britain have now got it; they are able to divorce what they may or may not feel about the rights and wrongs of the operations in the world in which we are partaking from their complete and universal—almost universal—admiration and respect for our armed forces. When one talks to commanders, of whatever rank, who have returned from operations, what is clear is a universal pride in the performance and courage of those whom they have commanded. We must remember that this is the hoodie generation—the PlayStation kids—who are performing so well; they are performing as heroically as their grandparents and great-grandparents did in a more heroic age.
In the few minutes available to me, I wish to raise a few points about our care for the wounded. When people are injured on operations, they receive first-class treatment on the battlefield. When they go to medical facilities such as Camp Bastion, they receive first-class treatment there too. They then come to Selly Oak, which is a world-class organisation. I am not one of those people who signs No. 10 website petitions asking for the restoration of military hospitals, because if I were still in the Army and I were wounded, I would want to go to Selly Oak. It is a centre of excellence where people have developed real skills in dealing with cranial injuries, gunshot wounds and all sorts of other requirements.
People then go to Headley Court, another fantastic organisation, which will be further improved thanks to Help for Heroes and a big injection of cash from the Government. My point is that we hope that after going to such places, the personnel return to their unit. If they do not, and they cannot continue in the Army, they may have to go back to their community; we all represent those communities. There are people living in our towns and villages who may not outwardly have a visible disability, but who might have a disability inside their heads. We are only just starting to understand post-traumatic stress. We know that it can manifest itself again 14 years after an event, so there has to be a system in place to look after people if post-traumatic stress revisits them at any point.
People with a disability who are trying to come to terms with life without a job and without the support of the military family are massively important. So, I am delighted that Help for Heroes has managed to support Combat Stress, Skill Force— another wonderful charity that gets servicemen into schools and other learning institutions, so that students can benefit from their presence and they can learn a new trade—and the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association. The help that has been given is enormously good.
I also wish to discuss two people, whom I visited at Selly Oak some months ago: Rifleman Stephen Vause, who was in a coma, having been injured in Basra while serving with 4th Battalion, The Rifles; and Corporal Tony Burbidge. After I saw Stephen Vause in Birmingham, he went to the neurological centre at Putney, and he is now making fantastic progress at Headley Court. Having seen him more recently, when I noticed that he had progressed so much, and having spoken with his wonderful mother, Jessica Cheeseman, I realised that Stephen will require lifelong care and his mother and his wonderful family will require support for him for the rest of his days. We must consider such issues when we talk about the wounded.
The other soldier I wish to speak about is Corporal Tony Burbidge, a career soldier, who was shot in the arm in Basra. I was not with him for long enough to make a full assessment, but he had regimental sergeant major written all over him—he was a real warrior, and the Army loses people like him at its peril. I do not know whether he has yet passed his fitness test to re-enter full service in the armed forces. There was much debate about that when I bicycled 350 miles with him for Help for Heroes. He said to me that he was struggling to reach the precise level of fitness required to return to full strength. I hope that the Army and the MOD can cut such people a bit of slack. I wrote to his commanding officer, Rupert Jones, and was heartened by his reply—like all good regiments, the Rifles will look after its own. I hope that MOD will recognise that if such people cannot make the precise fitness grade, we will lose a real asset and there will be many more Corporal Burbidges to look after.
I would have liked to use the second part of my speech to talk about a much more contentious issue—the appalling Government decision to axe the Defence Export Services Organisation—and about why it is so damaging at a time when we must build up our balance of payments and support our manufacturing industry. However, I recognise that there is not enough time, so I shall wait for the Queen's Speech debate to make that contribution.
Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Wycombe, Conservative)
Like other hon. Members, I begin by honouring the work that our armed forces are undertaking, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by paying tribute to those who have been wounded and who have died.
This is the first time that I have spoken in a defence debate since my election to this House in 2001, which might suggest to Members, if they did not already know, that I am not a defence expert. The main threat to our armed services abroad is, of course, the same as that which endangers us at home, although less directly. Defence policy and security policy are inextricably linked. It is in that context that I want to consider a matter raised by Nick Harvey—the domestic and foreign implications of recent US military action in Pakistan.
As some hon. Members know, I have the largest number of Muslim constituents of any official Opposition Member. Those who seek to defeat our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan usually claim to act in the name of their religion. My constituents, together with the overwhelming majority of British Muslims, reject that claim unambiguously, but have been troubled, as we all have, by those who seek to drive a wedge between British Muslims and their fellow citizens of other religions and none, and whose key strategic aim is to win the hearts and minds of young British Muslims, to denigrate Britain's mainstream Muslim leadership as "kuffar" and, ultimately, to replace that leadership with the leadership of extremists.
Those who worship at Islamic religious institutions in my constituency come mostly from a deeply traditional Islamic background and originate largely from Azad Kashmir and Pakistan, as do up to 1 million other British citizens. I wish, therefore, to address Pakistan and its role in relation to our defence and security. The movement of people between Britain and Pakistan is habitual and frequent, and enriches both countries. I have visited Pakistan and Kashmir twice and addressed meetings there, present at which were many British citizens planning to return to Britain in due course.
What happens in Pakistan and Kashmir touches many British Muslims more directly than events elsewhere and nearer to home, and events are taking place in Pakistan that directly affect the security of that country, which is of course an ally. On
In recent weeks the US has launched repeated missile strikes in Pakistan. It has been claimed that George Bush, in the final months of his presidency, has signed an executive order giving US special forces carte blanche to operate in Pakistan. These events have been closely followed in Britain by citizens of Pakistani and Kashmiri origin.
We must, of course, appreciate that the war in Afghanistan in which British lives are at risk does not stop at the border. I understand, as we all should, the frustration of US and NATO commanders who know well that plots hatched in Pakistan cost blood and treasure, as the saying has it, in Afghanistan. Some may believe, not altogether without reason, that Pakistan is doing less than it could to combat insurgency in the tribal areas, to which Pakistan, of course, will counter that it has already done much at the cost of some 1,400 Pakistani lives—another sacrifice that we should honour.
We should be unwilling to comment on any individual action. None the less, I believe that we should draw some definite general conclusions in the interests of our security and our defence. Pakistan is not in a stable condition, to put it mildly. That is not to say that it is in the grip of extremism, as some reporting suggests. That would be a grotesque misrepresentation. In the recent elections, the extremists fared poorly, even in the north-western areas, which are sometimes portrayed by parts of our media as a hotbed of unchallenged fanaticism. The Pakistan Peoples party, which won most seats in February's election after the terrible murder of Benazir Bhutto, is essentially a moderate party.
Pakistan has an articulate, educated and westward-looking middle class. The vast majority of people there want what people everywhere want: prosperity, security and freedom. However, as I say, Pakistan is deeply troubled at present. We have seen the recent film footage of the terrible explosion in Islamabad, which cost the lives of more than 40 people, and we remember the Bhutto murder.
The moderation of the people of Pakistan must never be underestimated, but one would be bold to predict a trouble-free future for that country in the medium term and especially in the short term. A key British strategic aim must therefore be to support the fledgling Government of Pakistan. The US military intervention is having an unwelcome effect in Islamabad. Only last week, Pakistan's Parliament passed a unanimous resolution calling for an end to military action. It urged an urgent review of national security. I appreciate that there is a dispute about the effect of the resolution and that it was not a reaction to US actions alone. Pakistani politicians are well aware of the Saudi peace initiative, but this development was worrying.
As I say, we should be unwilling to comment on any individual action. We have to ask ourselves some hard questions. Are those actions likely to inflame extremism in Pakistan? The answer is yes. Are they likely to have a significant effect on countering the insurgency? I am not a military expert, but I suspect that the answer is no. Is the damage that they do in driving up extremism in Pakistan greater than any good that they might do in countering insurgency? Again, I am afraid, the answer must be yes. That harm has repercussions here at home. There is no need for me to labour that point.
Those on the Treasury Bench have a responsibility this afternoon. I look to the Minister who responds to the debate to make it crystal clear that the Government believe that as a rule there should be no military intervention by outside forces in Pakistan without the permission of its Government and that any such intervention damages our defence interests, compromises our security and undermines the position of a key ally at a time of great need.
Douglas Carswell (Harwich, Conservative)
Robert Kagan writes of how the world is returning to normal. The author of "The Return of History and the End of Dreams" writes of how many of the post-cold war strategic assumptions are coming to an end. In place of a world dominated by an all-powerful American hegemony, the world is becoming more multi-polar. Kagan writes of how new regional powers are emerging and have begun to jockey for advantage: China, India, Iran and Russia. He suggests that the democracies of the world—Britain, America and others—face a new challenge from resurgent autocracies.
There is also the threat of radical Islamism. On
For many people, the answer is simple: spend more money—an extra £10 billion here, an extra £10 billion there. However, after a decade of the Government hosing additional money at health and education, we know that more money alone does not always achieve the improvements expected; so it is, I fear, with defence. Any additional expenditure on defence needs to be accompanied by reform. Hosing more money at defence alone will not improve our armed forces. Before spending more money, we need to end the years of indecision and strategic drift. Above all, we need to end the racket that is contemporary defence procurement policy.
Our defence policy should be informed by an assessment of our foreign policy objectives, by careful, cool-headed, level-headed consideration of our national interest, and by an assessment of various strategic assumptions. That is what should determine how we prepare our armed forces. Foreign policy calculations should shape our defence strategic guidance, and our defence priorities should then be determined by what is in the defence strategic guidance. It is simply bogus to pretend that that is what happens today. Anyone who thinks that it is does not really know what is happening in the Ministry of Defence. For example, where in the current draft of the defence strategic guidance are there planning assumptions or scenarios that call for two new carriers?
Labour came to power promising to overhaul defence procurement, yet according to the best-selling author Lewis Page, its defence industrial strategy amounts to business as usual. The defence industrial strategy is more about industry than defence. It does more to safeguard the interests of selected contractors than the interests of the armed forces. The DIS is good at putting large amounts of public money on to the balance sheets of a few contractors, but that is about all it is good for. The DIS talks about best value for money, and improving delivery and costs, but all the evidence shows that the DIS promises things that are almost by definition mutually exclusive. We cannot both shore up our defence industrial base and provide our armed forces with the best value kit in the world; it is a logical impossibility.
The DIS is, in reality, a corporatist, protectionist racket. Lobbyists for the DIS on the political left justify it as a means of preserving jobs. The same arguments once trotted out to justify Government subsidy of British Leyland are used to legitimise squandering our defence budget. To those on the political right, the fig leaf justification is about something called sovereignty of supply. The same arguments were once trotted out to justify the corn laws.
Defence procurement is run in the interests of the big contractors, not our armed forces. Billions are spent on what it suits the likes of BAE Systems, VT and others to supply. The taxpayer pays a high price for protectionist procurement; the soldier pays a blood price. I shall give one example. In Afghanistan, helicopters allow our troops to cover distances quickly and give us tactical flexibility, yet there are not enough of them. Why? Protectionist procurement. In a letter to me, dated
"the judgement of the department that a competition...would cause delay".
Thus the alternatives were never fully considered.
A £1 billion contract to build helicopters was awarded for a helicopter that cost almost 50 per cent. more than the alternatives, and which would not be ready until at least 2012. That is a long time to wait if one is in a minefield in southern Afghanistan. Sir Kevin Tebbit, who was the permanent under-secretary at the MOD when the decision to exclude rival bids was made, did not have to wait anything like that time before he joined the board of the company that got the contract. Our armed forces in Afghanistan pay a blood price for the shortage of helicopters. The price of protectionist procurement is paid in English blood in Helmand.
It is ironic that the helicopter that eventually lifted Corporal Mark Wright and his comrades off the minefield in Helmand was apparently an American Sikorsky—precisely the kind of alternative never considered by the MOD. Those who think that procurement policy should be about protecting jobs should perhaps remember that. Sikorsky tells me that it wrote to the MOD, offering to supply some 20-plus lift helicopters within months. It tells me that it took Sir Kevin's former Department longer to respond to the offer than it would have taken the firm to fulfil it.
Protectionist procurement weakens us. The idea that it can somehow strengthen our standing in the world to purchase military equipment from only a handful of supposedly UK suppliers is nonsense. We need off-the-shelf defence procurement. In any market where there is a constraint on supply, the seller sets the terms of trade; so it is in defence. The DIS restricts supply to a few privileged contractors. No through-life approach can stop the taxpayer being ripped off, or the armed forces being denied the kit that they need to have on time, every time.
We need to consider making off-the-shelf procurement the default setting for our defence procurement policy. BAE Systems and VT might not like it, but it would ensure that our armed forces had the kit they need to do the tasks that we set them. It would help us to meet the challenges that Robert Kagan writes about in his book. We need off-the-shelf, multilateral procurement, working in collaboration with our democratic allies.
Tobias Ellwood (Shadow Minister, Culture, Media & Sport; Bournemouth East, Conservative)
It is a pleasure to be the concluding Back-Bench speaker in what has been a very interesting debate on defence policy. There has been huge focus on Afghanistan and that is where I will focus my remarks as well. I have recently returned from yet another trip there and I am concerned that we might be heading towards a civil war there unless we see some huge changes in strategy.
It is seven years on and there are four clear areas of concern. First, there is a lack of international co-operation, with a mess of confusion of command and control between the UN, the EU and DFID. Every day, £700 million is spent on military matters in Afghanistan but only £7 million a day on humanitarian matters, and that ratio needs to change. Our soldiers are at the top of the hill, holding the ground, looking over their shoulders, expecting something to happen in the village below. It does not happen and that is why they stay longer and longer, wondering what they are doing there.
My next concern is the Afghan constitution, which we touched on in an interesting debate yesterday. I do not believe that the one-size-fits-all solution is suitable for Afghanistan, which is a wonderful mixture, with myriad ethnic groupings, alliances and allegiances. They do not all look to Kabul and President Karzai for leadership, but to their local jirga and the local head of the town or the village. That has been completely ignored in the constitution. We need to look at local autonomy, giving a little emphasis to the local leadership, but that has not happened. The only time that the 10 ethnic groups, on which my hon. Friend Dr. Fox touched earlier, ever came together in the past was when a foreign force came in and they joined together and rallied to try to destroy it. Then they returned to arguing with or fighting each other. We need to recognise and celebrate those differences, not think that there is one size that fits all.
There is also a lack of vision or strategy for the country. Access to the markets is limited. If any country has some product to sell to an international market, it needs to be able to reach that market. The three main arterial routes in Afghanistan are difficult to travel. There has been no decision to build any railway; only the Iranians are considering one in the east of the country. We need to ensure that there are better methods of reaching the Indian ocean and the trans-Siberian railway to export whatever produce can be grown. Before the Soviet invasion, Afghanistan was one of the greenest countries in the world. That has now been lost because of the lack of irrigation systems; 92 per cent. of the water runs out of the country and only 8 per cent. is harnessed. Those are the sort of issues that need to be tackled, but no one is doing so because each area is working on quick impact projects rather than following a bigger plan, linking together and providing a marketing strategy that can lift the country off its knees.
It has taken a long time to understand what is happening in Helmand and to achieve co-ordination between the MOD, the FCO and DFID. There is talk of handing over to the local military, but I am afraid that only 400 soldiers have been trained locally, and that is not enough. Despite a target of 135,000 soldiers, there are only 400 of combat capability.
After seven years in Afghanistan and five years in Iraq at a cost of £9 billion to the taxpayer, it is right to ask why it is taking us so long to make the transition to peacekeeping from war fighting and whether we could do better. Recent military engagements are increasingly characterised by the rapid defeat of the enemy by a relatively small deployment of forces, but an inability to respond to the ensuing lawlessness, which ratchets up. It starts with looting and eventually the enemy starts to regroup, and nothing happens during that small window of opportunity of limited security.
We win the peace but we lose the war. There is an absence of a mature plan for post-conflict operations. That leads to delays in restoring essential services, establishing a basic rule of law and restarting the economy. Our troops remain rather than return home as expected, and the cost of the entire operation ratchets up ever higher. I propose that after consultation there should be a radical overhaul of defence policy and how the UK conducts reconstruction and stabilisation. I would like a new stabilisation and reconstruction force to be created. I stress that that is my personal view, but I hope that my party's Front Benchers and the Government will consider it. Such a force would allow Britain to complete the overall mission in a more timely and humane manner. We cannot rely on the UN and the EU to do that; we have seen that they are not capable of it. Nor can we rely on the Department for International Development to do it, because it does not work effectively in insecure environments. States such as Afghanistan lack the initial capability because the facilities are simply not there.
I want the military to lead a large-scale, specialist reconstruction and stabilisation force with the objective of filling the gap between emergency humanitarian assistance and longer-term development assistance, trained and equipped to make a prompt, visible and effective impact on the way of life so that the future looks brighter. I would like the force to be able to provide continued security operations, local policing, humanitarian relief, emergency housing, emergency shelter, food, water and basic health facilities and enable the restoration of power and grass-roots local governance.
That would be to plant the seeds; they would not be expected to flourish immediately. However, we would be proving to the locals that we meant business and wanted to empower them rather than take over. I should also like education facilities to be reconstructed and agricultural programmes to be initiated. The brigade-sized reconstruction force would have to be familiar with post-conflict non-governmental organisations and work with the EU, the Department for International Development and the USA. Gaining experience before we go in—that is my vision. Believe it or not, all that is happening today in Afghanistan thanks to our military, not by design but by accident. No one else is doing it.
Kevan Jones (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Defence; North Durham, Labour)
indicated dissent.
Tobias Ellwood (Shadow Minister, Culture, Media & Sport; Bournemouth East, Conservative)
The Minister shakes his head, but the mosque in Musa Qala is being built not by the Department for International Development, the EU or the UN, but by Royal Engineers. Why? Because that is exactly what they want to build, because the locals want it. We lost the town once before because nothing was happening. The Royal Engineers got frustrated, so they did things themselves. Let us acknowledge that no one else is better positioned than our military to do such work in that small window of opportunity of about six months to a year. After that, we could hand over to the many organisations that do such a wonderful job in those areas.
As I suggested, I envisage the unit as a brigade-sized one. That is the minimum size required if it is to be able to dovetail into the operational environments in which we are involved. I would leave the Ministry of Defence to determine the detailed make-up, but I would see a massive contribution coming from the Territorial Army, who have myriad skills. I am thinking not only of bricklayers and so forth, but of civil servants from the local council who could be TA-trained so that they could look after themselves in a dangerous operation and go straight to the local jirga to explain how to set up a simple council, for example. That is the energy that I would like to be put in, but that does not happen at the moment.
I turn to the long-term objectives. So important is a stabilisation force that I envisage a two-tier echelon developing in the UK. The first would be the combat brigades and the second would be stabilisation forces. Brigades would rotate, playing a similar role, so that there was a firm understanding of the importance of their work.
The first thing that will be asked about my plan is where the money would come from. DFID has a massive budget of £5 billion; the cost of being in Iraq and Afghanistan is £9 billion already. The capitation costs of a brigade is about £100 million a year. I envisage a small proportion of DFID's £5 billion budget being taken away; it would be for humanitarian aid, but it would be given to the MOD so that it could establish a brigade-level stabilisation force to do the work.
General Petraeus said that our objective should no longer be to defeat the enemy, but to enable the local. That is taking rather a long time. It did not happen in Iraq and it is taking far too long in Afghanistan. There has been a revolution in how we conduct war; we have moved from operating on a cold-war basis to doing so on a counter-insurgency basis, and we require the same revolution in our peacekeeping capabilities. The US is doing exactly that, but the UK Government Departments continue to pursue separate agendas and territorial battles over funding. The consequence has been inefficiencies and delays in following our armed forces in their efforts to provide a secure enough environment for stabilisation work to begin. If we as a country are willing to step forward when other countries hesitate in order to support democratic values, defend borders and challenge rogue states, then we must have the right tools not only to fight wars but to keep the peace.
Gerald Howarth (Shadow Minister, Defence; Aldershot, Conservative)
I first join other hon. Members in welcoming the new Secretary of State to his post. Like me, he not only has responsibility for defence matters in this place but has a large BAE Systems facility in his constituency. I, for one, make no apology for that, and I am sure that he will not either, but he will need to judge matters carefully when he comes to make his decisions.
I welcome back to the House my hon. and gallant Friend Dr. Murrison, who was unable to attend our previous debate because he was serving abroad with the Royal Navy in his capacity as a reserve officer. It is good that this House has hon. Members who are able to continue to serve their country in the way that he does.
We have had another well-informed debate—so much so that it will of course receive no attention from our friends in the media. Frankly, we might as well operate under Chatham House rules for all that it matters to them. I was most impressed by many of my hon. Friends' contributions. It is a pity that at one point we were down to just one Labour Back Bencher. Many Labour Members participate in the armed forces parliamentary scheme, take an interest in defence and have defence interests in their constituencies, and I suggest to the Minister of State that he might try to encourage more of them to join in these debates.
We heard excellent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) and for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), who have been in theatre recently. My hon. Friend Dr. Fox, the shadow Secretary of State, has been delighted to receive so many plaudits for what was clearly an excellent speech. We were pleased to welcome my hon. Friend Mr. Goodman, who is a newcomer to our debates. We look forward to hearing from him again. He made some extremely important points, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East, about the importance of winning hearts and minds. All that I can do is to refer my hon. Friends to the excellent speech that my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury made yesterday in Westminster Hall. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East referred to a reconstruction and stabilisation force, and rightly paid tribute to the role of the Royal Engineers as combat engineers. I have Gibraltar barracks in my constituency, and I am acutely aware of the important part that they are playing on the front line.
In the debate earlier this month, I pointed to the new geopolitical situation, particularly to the new assertiveness on the part of Russia following its spectacularly successful invasion of Georgia, its claim to large swathes of the Arctic, and the rebuilding of its military capability. Earlier this week, several of us met former Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, whose assessment that Russia is returning to the more authoritarian style of the Government of the old Soviet Union confirmed my growing fears.
However, it is not just a resurgent and assertive Russia that we need to note. At the risk of being accused by Nick Harvey of waxing lyrical on the plethora of alternative threats, I would like to refer to some of those already mentioned by other hon. Members. As Rear Admiral Chris Parry—who until recently was development, concepts and doctrine centre director at the Ministry of Defence—observed at the Jane's-Cityforum conference this week, the projected population growth from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion by 2050 will intensify competition for resources, climate change may intensify migration, and ideological pressures are increasing. Some of those aspects were acknowledged by the Secretary of State. My hon. Friend Mr. Carswell—I agreed with him on this point—rightly said that we are in a state of flux.
Many hon. Members have referred to the immediate imperative to secure the best possible outcome in Afghanistan in the shortest possible time and, as my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said, to establish clear benchmarks. However, there is a danger of becoming overly focused on that narrow objective. I well understand that today's commanders feel the need to optimise for the most likely scenario, but to abandon the ability to engage in large-scale manoeuvre operations would render the security of the United Kingdom vulnerable. When General Dannatt said last year that our capacity to meet the unexpected was "almost non-existent", that should have been a wake-up call. Like my hon. Friend Ann Winterton, I welcome the investment in the new range of armoured vehicles for Afghanistan for which I and others called three years ago, although we await the details of which major programmes will be slashed in order to pay for this £700 million commitment.
I fear that we are at risk of losing key military capabilities, either because there is no time to train or because we lack the necessary equipment. We should be under no illusions. The regeneration of a lost capability will not be remedied overnight, so we need to prepare, which is what defence of the realm is all about. I shall give one example: anti-submarine warfare. With the contracting fleet of Nimrod aircraft available and the heavy commitment to surveillance in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the Minister satisfied that we have the requisite capability to respond to a threat that could be posed by Iran, for example, or by Russia's Akula II submarines, which I am told are extremely quiet and carry cruise missiles? As my constituent Richard Gardner, the editor of Aerospace International magazine, put it in this month's edition:
"Even if the long delayed Nimrod MRA4 programme survives, the very small size of the fleet (perhaps now only 9 down from 21) will clearly be inadequate to provide more than a token maritime reconnaissance capability—just as submarine building resumes in Russia and many other countries."
Against the highly uncertain background to which many have referred in the two debates we have had this month, it is truly astonishing how this Government have slashed our military capabilities. I shall give some examples: infantry battalions have been cut by 50 per cent. from 107 in 1997 to 50 today; combat aircraft have been cut by 44 per cent. from 339 to 189; support helicopters have been cut by 33 per cent. from 77 to 52; and as we all know, destroyers and frigates have been cut by 30 per cent. from 35 to 25. As my hon. Friend Mr. Jenkin intimated, rumours abound about the prospects for further reductions in the equipment programme. For the certainty of the House and British industry, it is time that the Government made clear where the equipment examination is going and when they are going to report to the House about it. Andrew Mackinlay made the point that there is a lack of modern equipment to train on, and my hon. Friend Richard Ottaway rightly provoked the Secretary of State into committing to provide full cover for the carriers, and we will hold him to that.
On the issue of equipment, I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State say that he will give maximum support to the export opportunities that arise from Britain's defence industrial base. It is a pity he was not Secretary of State a year ago when the Defence Export Services Organisation was scrapped, as my hon. Friend Mr. Benyon rightly pointed out. That was an absolute disgrace. My hon. Friend pointed out that morale is low, and that some UK Trade & Investment staff have apparently refused to co-operate with the Defence and Security Organisation staff on moral grounds; we need to be told whether that is true or not. [I nterruption. ] The Minister says that that is rubbish, but the issue is very important.
As far as the defence industrial strategy is concerned, I am afraid to say that I fundamentally disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich. He is entitled to his view, but I have to put on the record that some of the things that he said about buying off the shelf are not the policy of the Conservative party. The policy of our party is to ensure that we have sovereign capability over key equipment, such as the joint strike fighter, and his suggestion that the whole procurement programme is a corporatist, protectionist racket is very wide of the mark.
Moreover, for the benefit of those in Yeovil, to whom I spoke when I visited Westland 10 days ago, we feel that the Future Lynx is the only game in town. I hope that the Secretary of State will make a decision on that quickly.
Liam Fox (Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, Defence; Woodspring, Conservative)
Where's the Yeovil MP?
Gerald Howarth (Shadow Minister, Defence; Aldershot, Conservative)
My hon. Friend asks where Mr. Laws is. He waxes lyrical in his constituency about this matter, but he never turns up to take part in these debates, which is a great shame. I visited Yeovil; perhaps he would like to visit the House and participate in these debates.
Let me deal with personnel. We all rightly pay tribute to the calibre of our armed forces, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex said in a passionate speech, which I salute, a huge burden falls on members of the armed forces and their families. That is why national focus has shifted to the military covenant. It is important to remember that the covenant is not between the armed forces and the Government, but between the armed forces and the people. We are the representatives of the people, and it is our duty to ensure that the people fulfil their part of the covenant. We do it by pressing the Government to ensure that they deliver on behalf of us all, as the people, with whom the covenant is made.
The Defence Committee, so ably chaired by my right hon. Friend Mr. Arbuthnot, drew attention to the relentless impact of operational tempo on the armed forces, especially the Army and Royal Air Force. Ten per cent. of Army personnel exceed the target of 415 days' separated service in any 30-month period. To put that in context, it means pretty much being away from the family for half the time in a year and a half—nine months. It is a huge commitment, which we need to appreciate. At the same time, 10 per cent. of RAF personnel exceed the 140 days in any 12-month period on detached duty. That is four times the target rate.
As at
My hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State and my hon. Friend Robert Key pointed to the wave of liabilities that arises from the extensive injuries that our armed forces have sustained on operations. We are not only considering physical injuries—my hon. Friend referred to the work of Combat Stress. I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury for Help for Heroes—I am proudly wearing its bangle, as does almost every Army officer I meet. Those charities do a fantastic job, as do the Army Benevolent Fund, the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund and others. It is not all Help for Heroes, great though that charity is. They all do fantastic work.
Combat Stress has 8,000 people on its books, with 1,160 new referrals so far this year—a 16 per cent. increase on last year. That is a serious matter, and the nation must step up to the plate to meet those people's requirements in future. We, as parliamentarians, cannot allow the issue to be ducked. I hope that the Minister has heard the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury. Corporal Burbidge and his friends should be found a role in the military. I am sure that it is possible to do that.
I conclude by referring to the Ministry of Defence's annual report and accounts for 2007-08. They reveal:
"For every one of the last 7 years the AF have operated above the level that they are resourced and structured to deliver. Achieving this has only been possible at the expense of the readiness of the AF to undertake contingent operations, and with an unavoidable impact on service personnel... The force structure cannot sustain indefinitely the nature, scale and intensity of operations being conducted in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past two years."
The Secretary of State says that his military advisers assure him that that can be managed. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex said, the indictment by the Ministry of Defence of its own conduct seriously undermines its claim to have a coherent policy. If we add into the equation all the potential threats that could be out there, which I enumerated earlier, we can see that our capacity to meet the unexpected is almost non-existent. Our capacity to meet a major threat is non-existent, because we do not have the force structures to deal with one; we have been limited to the force structure that we now have for expeditionary operations.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury said, our duty to the nation is to point out the potential risks to our freedom and security. The people must then decide what role they want the UK to play in the world. We cannot continue to say, "This is what needs to be done, but here is a budget that we know is inadequate for the job." That is why we shall have a defence review immediately after the next general election. I make no secret of the fact that I would relish the challenge posed to the current ministerial team by my right hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for North-East Hampshire to inspire the nation to understand the importance of defence in the maintenance of the freedom and prosperity of these islands.
Bob Ainsworth (Minister of State (Armed Forces), Ministry of Defence; Coventry North East, Labour)
Once again we have had an excellent debate. However, I do not have time to respond to all of the many valid points that have been raised in every corner of the House—a very knowledgeable House—about defence policy.
In thinking about how to respond to the debate, I decided that I ought to start by at least trying to reply to the point made by the Chairman of the Select Committee, Mr. Arbuthnot. He raised the point, which is raised with us repeatedly, about the level of understanding of defence issues, of our armed forces and of the operations in which they are engaged not being as high as it should be. We all bear a responsibility to address that. It is not only the ministerial team who need to try to explain and inspire, but every one of us. When we consider the efforts being made, it is the responsibility of all of us in the House to explain the dangers, the sheer hard work undertaken on our behalf by our armed forces and all the associated defence issues.
Having quoted Pericles, the right hon. Gentleman descended into some despair, but I do not accept that the people are foolish. We have come a long way, even in the past year, in terms of people's level of recognition and understanding of armed forces issues. I have noticed that, and I do not think that it is just because of where I stand. The people have moved and developed a greater understanding of defence issues and our armed forces. The work done by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend Mr. Davies helped in some small measure to focus that increased recognition. [ Interruption. ] I know how he is loved by those on the Opposition Benches, so I thought that I would throw his name in.
We have made progress on such issues, but we need to do more. My hon. Friend Andrew Mackinlay talked about the need to commemorate past sacrifice and past wars and operations. I do not think that we do nearly enough to educate our people about our military history and try to ensure that they understand and can ground where we are now from our history. We ought to make more effort in that regard.
The right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire related that lack of understanding to our current operations in Afghanistan. Again, I agree that a lot needs to be done to make people understand not only why we are there and what we are doing, but the massive military complexities of the theatre of operations and the huge political complexities, which in many ways are even more difficult than the military ones.
I do not think that anyone expects the task in Afghanistan to be easy. All the parties represented in the House recognise and accept that we need to do it. Although it is very nice—and something that we ought to do—to try to build the Afghan nation, to try to give the Afghan people basic rights, to try to enable Afghan women to go to school and to try to stop the mediaeval nonsense that comes from the Taliban being imposed on the Afghan people, the real reason that we allow our young people to go there, and sometimes to die there, is that it is in our vital national interest to pursue this issue. We therefore have to try to increase people's levels of understanding.
I wish that, when one or two Members of the House visit the Afghan theatre—or any other theatre, for that matter—they would go there with at least a half-open mind. Some of the comments made by Mr. Ellwood appeared to display a prejudice, rather than a half-open mind. I would have hoped that he would have least looked at some of the achievements. Of course, a lot of those achievements have been delivered by our troops in highly dangerous environments—
Bob Ainsworth (Minister of State (Armed Forces), Ministry of Defence; Coventry North East, Labour)
I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman.
A lot of those achievements have been delivered by our troops in highly dangerous environments, where only they can do the reconstruction. They know that, and they know that it is about inspiring people, about winning hearts and minds, and about winning people over.
Bob Ainsworth (Minister of State (Armed Forces), Ministry of Defence; Coventry North East, Labour)
I am not going to give way.
The troops do that work because no one else can do it in areas such as Musa Qala, for example, a few weeks after we took the town.
Bob Ainsworth (Minister of State (Armed Forces), Ministry of Defence; Coventry North East, Labour)
I will perhaps give way to the hon. Lady in a while.
The right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire needs to do a bit of a job himself, in inspiring his own party. If we are genuinely going to explain defence issues to the nation, we need to start by not deceiving the nation over defence spending. Some Conservative Members on the Front and Back Benches, genuinely want a big increase in defence spending; I understand that. Some, however, repeatedly seek to give the impression that they are committed to that, but they are not. Their own party is not committed to any increase in defence spending. If we are going to try to explain, to develop a level of understanding and to inspire, we need to start with a little bit of honesty, do we not? When the leader of the Conservative party said that he did not back any of the Government's current spending levels other than the health spending level, I know that it upset a lot of people on his Front Bench. Let us acknowledge that. Neither the Conservative party nor the Labour party is committed to any increase in defence spending whatever. If we are going to inspire and explain, we ought at least to be honest.
Bernard Jenkin (North Essex, Conservative)
I have the highest respect for the Minister, but will he be honest and tell the House exactly what the financial situation is in the Ministry of Defence? It is an open secret that he has not got the money to fulfil the equipment programme that he says he is committed to, and we are now reading in the papers that a big programme is going to be cut. The Secretary of State might not have used those actual words, but that is clearly the impression that he left with The Sunday Times. When are the Government going to be honest about the real situation?
Bob Ainsworth (Minister of State (Armed Forces), Ministry of Defence; Coventry North East, Labour)
There are many challenges in the defence budget, as the hon. Gentleman knows. Our people are stretched, and they have been working at above capacity in recent years. We do not deny that. I know that he honestly believes that we ought to commit to a huge increase in defence spending. Equally, however, he knows that his own party is not committed to such an increase.
Linda Gilroy (Plymouth, Sutton, Labour)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we all bear a responsibility to exercise self-discipline when we talk about these things, and that it is particularly important that the Opposition should not play into the propaganda war that is going on in Afghanistan?
Bob Ainsworth (Minister of State (Armed Forces), Ministry of Defence; Coventry North East, Labour)
My hon. Friend is right. There is misinformation and, on the odd occasion, mischief. It does not help us to develop an understanding and to convince people that our operations in Afghanistan are in our vital national interests and that we need to proceed with them.
A number of hon. Members mentioned helicopters. Dr. Fox accused us of having a chronic under-availability in air capacity. I hope he recognises that there has been a 60 per cent. increase in the number of helicopters in the Afghan theatre. The main increase has been in the number of Sea Kings, which are now fitted with the new rotor blades that enable them to operate. Eight additional Chinooks are being modified, and we have bought an additional six Merlins. If we get the transition in Iraq that we are all hoping to see in the near future, it will potentially make the Merlin fleet available for use in the Afghan theatre.
The hon. Gentleman asked what we are trying to achieve on piracy and about additional capacity. Our motives for getting involved in the European operation are to increase the capacity that is available to deal with the pirate problem off the east coast of Africa and to capture the political will of our allies. We are going to be able to ensure that there is no conflict with the operations of Combined Task Force 150. By providing the command structure ourselves from Northwood, which we have offered to do, and having provided a contribution towards the European security and defence policy operation on piracy, we should be able to ensure that the operations are complementary. It gives us a lot more capacity for dealing with piracy than we would otherwise have. HMS Northumberland is on station, armed with beefed-up rules of engagement and able to take on the pirates, and to confiscate and destroy their equipment.
Issues to do with decompression were raised. The hon. Gentleman made us aware of some grades in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who have decompression capabilities available to them. I do not know what decompression is available to Members of Parliament when they leave theatre, either. Our people have a six-month tour of operation. They get rest and recuperation. We have introduced decompression for very good reasons. I hope that we can keep that up, develop the thinking behind it and ensure that we use that decompression methodology to minimise the stress on our personnel coming back from theatre.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock raised an important issue at this time of year: parcels and post for theatre. We have tried to discourage people from getting involved in the generous acts that they want to participate in because of the consequences that inevitably flow from them. Our people in theatre want to receive parcels and messages from their loved ones at Christmas. We have got the free post facility for them. If the system is swamped by unnamed packages, it inevitably delays what is most precious to the people who are spending Christmas in theatre.
We are trying to develop other schemes and methods whereby people can show their appreciation. There are voucher schemes and the uk4u charity. The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend Mr. Jones, is looking at how else we can enable people to show their appreciation to the troops at Christmas time without creating the unforeseen circumstance that unsolicited mail creates of blocking that which is most precious to our people—messages and parcels from their loved ones.
My hon. Friend Linda Gilroy raised the issue of Devonport, inevitably and yet again. We are committed to the sustainability of the royal naval base at Devonport. We know that submarine work alone will not provide that. We need other depth work to smooth the workload there. We are committed to delivering that. On top of that, flag officer sea training and the amphibious expertise will be based, kept and maintained at Devonport.
It being Six o'clock, the motion lapsed, without Question put.