First Day

Part of Defence – in the House of Commons at 7:49 pm on 14 October 1991.

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Photo of John Home Robertson John Home Robertson , East Lothian 7:49, 14 October 1991

I speak as a member of the Select Committee on Defence which, among other things, concluded that the Government are providing no "coherent strategic overview" and that they have made no attempt to provide a military rationale for what, to many of us, seems to be a rather crude Treasury carve-up. but, we should never underestimate the Government's ability to make a crisis out of a windfall. Since Scotland is, as ever, getting the worst deal under those circumstances, I make no apology for concentrating on the impact of Government defence policy in Scotland.

The Rosyth naval base is being savaged. Our high-tech defence industries are being left floundering in impossible circumstances, and now our Territorial Army's parachute regiment is being axed and five first class infantry regiments face amalgamation or suspension.

Later this evening I shall join with other hon. Members from both sides of the House representing Scottish constituencies to present a petition signed by no fewer than 800,000 people in Scotland who oppose the cuts and amalgamations.

May I make a quick plea for the work force at GEC Ferranti Defence Systems Ltd., most of whom are in the Lothian and Edinburgh area. They have an unparalleled record in radar and avionics manufacture and it is not their fault that their management dug itself into a hole which led to the GEC takeover not so long ago. We are now left with a highly specialist division of GEC with very limited scope for diversification away from defence products. Two years ago there were 7,000 jobs; now there are just 4,000, and a further 800 redundancies have just been announced.

That sort of high-tech, precision engineering firm is what Britain requires if we are to have any future in quality manufacturing and the Government should be actively helping diversification projects in that field. I welcome the fact that the Labour Opposition are committed to introducing a defence diversification agency.

We should not be skimping on equipment for our slimmed-down armed forces. The Minister of State for Defence Procurement justified his recent decision not to go ahead with the purchase of Ferranti's FIN 1155 inertial navigation system for the new Challenger tank on the grounds that the system is "too sophisticated" and could not be justified on cost grounds". If we ever send British tank crews into action again, we must always ensure that they have the best equipment that we can get for them. Therefore, I urge the Government to reconsider that decision, as well as the case for helping firms such as Ferranti to develop new products, and alternative markets.

I turn to the important but vexed question of the future of the Royal Scots, the Gordons, the King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Queen's Own Highlanders. My personal feelings, as the son of a KOSB and as the Member of Parliament for many Royal Scots, are reinforced by my concern as a member of the Defence Select Committee that we must do justice to our armed forces by keeping their strength up to what is required to meet the tasks which we expect them to carry out. The disappearance of the threat of a massive land war in central Europe is a matter for great rejoicing and clearly justifies appropriate adjustment to military forces. However, it should not be taken as an excuse for Ministers to turn the British Army into a sort of military sweatshop which is intolerably overstretched. The Government and the Treasury must not be allowed to cut the strength of the Army beyond the reduction in the Army's allotted task. I can imagine the hue and cry if a Labour Government were to try to pull a fast one like this.

I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend on the Opposition Front Bench, the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill), has undertaken to base decisions on future force sizes on a proper assessment of the tasks of those forces in new world circumstances. But what are the Government doing? They have shed 14 battalion-scale commitments—fair enough—but they are cutting the number of battalions by 17. So the remaining 39 battalions will be left to take on the extra duties as best they can.

For example, troops allocated to specialist roles in the new NATO rapid reaction corps, which will demand a high state of readiness and complicated training, may be required to patrol the streets of Derry and Belfast at the same time. These infantry cuts go too far, and I agree with the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee about that.

How have units been selected for amalgamation or suspension? I do not necessarily suggest that the fact that the Royal Scots is the oldest infantry regiment in the Army —it is the first of the line—should carry too much weight, although it is obviously important. However, it was a bit much to send it into action in very dangerous circumstances in Iraq last year when at the same time Ministry of Defence civil servants were planning to wind up the regiment and to destroy up to 2,000 Army jobs in Scotland. The military issue should be the need to build on the strength of regiments which have a proven record of recruiting and retaining first-class soldiers. What is the sense of retaining regiments, for example, in the Queen's division, which is 18·5 per cent. undermanned because of recruiting and retention problems, while sacrificing the Gordons, the Royal Scots, the KOSBs and the Queen's Own Highlanders, which, to all intents and purposes, are up to strength?

I have been trying hard to understand the motives of the Secretary of State for Defence in taking such irrational decisions. He has said repeatedly that the amalgamations were the decision of the Army Board following consultation with the regiments. We know that colonels of the Scottish division refused to submit to that game of Russian roulette—probably rightly so—which brings us back to the Army Board. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan managed to get that on record from the Secretary of State for Defence, who confirmed that the Army Board consists of all the Tory Ministers in the Ministry of Defence plus a senior civil servant and four generals. The generals are comprehen-sively outgunned by the politicians by five to four and it is contemptible humbug for the Secretary of State to suggest otherwise and to say that it was a purely military decision. It was not. It was a political decision and one that the Government will have to live with.

The decisions relating to the Scottish division are irrational. They can be explained only as malice on the part of the Government towards Scotland. Shortly they will receive a petition signed by 800,000 people in Scotland who oppose the amalgamations and they ought to be aware of the strength of feeling throughout Scotland, even among what is left of the Tory party there. They have made a political decision, and if they stick to it they should not complain too much if they receive a political backlash as a consequence.