Armed Forces Personnel

Part of Points of Order – in the House of Commons at 1:10 pm on 21 June 2007.

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Photo of Liam Fox Liam Fox Shadow Secretary of State for Defence 1:10, 21 June 2007

That remark is so trivial and puerile that it is not worthy of a response.

All the problems that I have set out are made fundamentally worse by a Government who are fighting two major conflicts but refusing to fund them in full. No one could have put the problem more clearly than our outgoing Prime Minister, who said in his HMS Albion speech that defence spending had stayed

"constant at roughly...2.5 per cent. of GDP" since 1997, if

"we add in the extra funding for Iraq and Afghanistan".

In other words, even though we are now fighting two major conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Government expect to expend the same proportion of our national income on our defence forces as they did in 1997, when we were not involved in those conflicts. The consequence of failing to fund in full the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that our armed forces are being systematically salami-sliced. The incoming Prime Minister is the man responsible for the underfunding and he must understand that he cannot increase our armed forces' commitments without also increasing the resources to do the job.

How has all that affected our armed forces personnel? I turn first to the question of equipment. The Government's failure to ensure that sufficient equipment was available on time for the war in Iraq is well documented, not least in the tragic case of Sergeant Roberts. I remind the House that the board of inquiry into his death said:

"During the summer of 2002, constraints were placed on military activities (including procurement) which might have negatively impacted on negotiations with the United Nations."

In September 2002, the then Secretary of State for Defence was asked to agree 16 urgent operation requirements, but he agreed only to 12. The procurement of enhanced combat body armour was not agreed at that time, owing to political considerations—despite a clear warning that 2nd Royal Tank Regiment was 40 per cent. short of enhanced combat body armour for 1,015 troops. In other words, to avoid accusations that they had already agreed to go to war with Iraq, the Secretary of State for Defence delayed the order of vital body armour, with the direct result that Sergeant Roberts was killed unnecessarily. That remains one of the darkest stains on the record of the current Government—and of course no Minister paid the price for that scandal.

However, that was not the only way in which our forces were being disadvantaged. When the individual helicopter programmes were amalgamated in the overarching future rotor capability process, the overall budgets were reduced by £1.4 billion. In other words, when the Government introduced a single helicopter programme they used smoke and mirrors to reduce the budget, at a time when we were involved in two major conflicts. Spending on helicopter equipment has fallen from £662 million in 2001-02 to just £183 million in 2005-06, yet all hon. Members who have been to Iraq or Afghanistan will have heard complaints about the shortage of helicopters and the lack of lift capacity. The only people who appear not to hear that message when they visit are Ministers.

What of the Royal Navy? At a time of difficulty with recruitment and retention, what messages are we sending out? Since 1997, our frigate and destroyer fleet has been cut from 35 to 25, and our submarine attack fleet from 12 to eight. In addition, it is widely rumoured that an additional six ships will be mothballed, which would mean that almost half the fleet of 44 warships was mothballed. The six ships in question are four type 22 frigates—the Cumberland, Chatham, Cornwall and Cambleton—and two type 42 destroyers, the Exeter and the Southampton. The latter is due to relieve HMS Edinburgh in the Falklands in the coming days. All those reductions are based on the strategic falsehood that, because ships are now more technologically capable, numbers no longer matter. It ignores the basic truth that, however sophisticated a ship, it can be in only one place at a time.

The welfare of service families is of crucial importance. The surest route to a retention crisis is to create unhappy servicemen and women, and the easiest way to do that is to create unhappy service families. The quality of service housing has been shown to be deeply inadequate and the Minister of State admitted as much, although he said that changes were under way. The quality of service children's education has been a key concern, with improvements delayed by administrative problems. That is simply not good enough.

The interaction between the armed forces and the NHS remains disgracefully inadequate. When they move to different parts of the country, service families on NHS waiting lists must rejoin the new waiting list at the bottom and start all over again. That happens time and time again, and it is scandalous. After 10 years and huge increases in public expenditure the Government have yet to deal satisfactorily with that basic problem, and the House demands that something be done now.