Orders of the Day — Defence

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 14 March 1978.

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Photo of Mr James Lamond Mr James Lamond , Oldham East 12:00, 14 March 1978

Having listened to a fair amount of the debate, I would say that the contributions made by Opposition Members fall roughly into two categories. In the first category is the melodramatic nonsense that we heard from the right hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Macmillan) and his terrible twin the right hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery). Opposition Members in that category try to curdle our blood by saying that everything in the world is the fault of the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union were eliminated from this world, presumably we could all disarm immediately and everything in the garden would be lovely. I venture to suggest that if that were to happen Opposition Members would be busily engaged in erecting some new bogy—possibly the Chinese Peoples' Republic, which they are now so warmly welcoming as an ally. That country would become the major threat to the free world and we should have to re-arm against it.

In the other category are those hon. Members who seem to think that this is the occasion on which they should try to chastise the Government because, as they allege, Service men have not had a fair deal. If all the things that they say are correct, and all the stories that they bring to the House that they have heard in messes throughout the United Kingdom and abroad, along with all the other trivia, are well-founded, they drive one irresistibly to the conclusion that Service men are correct in saying that they have no one to speak for them.

If that is so, Service men should get representatives to speak on their behalf. The only people who will do so from an unbiased point of view are trade union organisers. If Conservative Members are prepared to accept that conclusion from the remarks that they make, I shall have some respect for them. However, if Service men believe that they can rely on Conservative Members to act as their spokesmen and to ensure that they get a fair deal from any Government, I am afraid that they are being sadly misled. If they are prepared to allow Conservative Members to act as their spokesmen, they will continue to be treated as any group of workers that is unorganised and has insufficient strength to get a fair deal. Until Service men realise that, they will be treated as they are now being treated.

I take a different view from both categories that I have mentioned. We have been discussing the level of defence expenditure. We see from the White Paper that Britain's defence expenditure amounts to £7,000 million per annum. Are we paying more than we should towards the cost of NATO compared with the other participants in the organisation? It may be that we should consider the world picture of the arms buildup. The money spent on arms throughout the world has increased thirtyfold since 1900. That is the increase at constant prices.

Is it not time that we asked what progress we are making towards reducing that enormous burden, not just on the British people but on the people throughout the world, particularly those in the underdeveloped countries, because it is on their backs that we are re-arming? That is not an idle question of my own; it has been asked by many prominent politicians, including some in this country. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said that it is no good having a defence policy that could bankrupt the society it is designed to defend. I wholeheartedly support that view. Mr. Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defence in the United States for some time, expressed the same sentiment when he said that excessive military spending can erode security rather than enhance it because the burden gets so great that the country cannot stand it any longer.

The right hon. Member for Farnham said that we needed something like a new Korea to get our economy moving. He conveniently forgot that the war in Vietnam was such a tremendous drain on the resources of even the mightiest industrial country in the world that, in the face of objections from its people—greater objections that it had ever faced before on any subject—the United States had to withdraw from Vietnam. If it had continued the war, the country would have collapsed, and surely no one believes that we should start another war in order to overcome our grave unemployment problem.

Are we all convinced that the figures we have been given over many years, of the build-up of the strength of the Soviet Union, are correct? I expected a rather larger shout of "Oh" when I suggested that there may have been an exaggeration of the expenditure of the Soviet Union on arms. On whom do we rely for a lot of our figures?