The House of Commons sets aside three 'estimates days'
each year on which to consider the estimates of
public spending by government departments. The topic of debate
on these days is chosen by the Liaison
Committee. Usually the subject of a recent report
by a departmental select committee is chosen, which in
turn relates to a particular estimate.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, for the year ending with 31 March 2022, for expenditure by
the Ministry of Defence:
(1) further resources, not exceeding £7,167,368,000, be
authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1152,
and
(2) the resources authorised for capital purposes be reduced by
£67,644,000 as so set out.—(.)
4.41pm
(Warley) (Lab)
I rise to speak as Deputy Chairman of the Select Committee on
Defence. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to
this debate. May I pass on the apologies of the Chair of the
Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr
Ellwood), who has had a minor operation this week? As we know, he
has very strong views on our defence capacity and would probably
have wished to express them fairly vociferously in this debate.
The defence estimates cover a vast range of work, but I will need
to compress my remarks to 10 to 15 minutes to allow other
contributions.
This is a dramatic time for defence issues. The agony of Ukraine
intensifies, as President Zelensky’s powerful address to us
yesterday made clear. The crisis has, of course, been building
for a number of years, as Russia has launched successive
cyber-attack warfare in the Baltic states and kinetic warfare in
Georgia, Crimea and the Donbas. It has now exploded dramatically
and tragically in Ukraine. We declare our solidarity with the
country, the people and the military forces of Ukraine.
How are we in the UK to react to the dramatic shift in
international security relations? Clearly, our Government and
Parliament now have to give an urgent and positive response to
the long-standing demands of our Defence Committee that we must
move towards 3% of GDP for defence spending. The Budget in just
over two weeks’ time has to respond positively to that
imperative. Colleagues on both sides of the House will speak
about detailed aspects of the consequential changes to personnel
and to equipment, not least reversing the proposed reduction in
numbers of the Army. To leave them sufficient time, I will focus
on the broader context.
(Beckenham) (Con)
I thank the right hon. Member, my friend, for giving way. Surely
one of the lessons of what we have seen in Ukraine is that a
small group of utterly determined trained, or indeed untrained,
men and women can use small arms and anti-tank weapons and stop a
hugely bigger force. We are therefore just in time to reverse
some of the decisions in the integrated review, such as scrapping
2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment, an infantry battalion that
proved its worth in 2009 hugely gallantly.
I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention—I think he
should have declared an interest. He is absolutely right; the
defence estimates and the Budget need to reflect the new
reality.
I want to concentrate on the broader context: the ideological
battle that is taking place, and the institutional shake-up that
is consequently required. Most crucially, we have to recognise
the full-spectrum approach of our opponents. Commentators in the
west often gabble glibly about hybrid warfare, but in the
framework of cyber war as an alternative to kinetic capability,
and often in a mechanistic way, rather than understanding the
political context and the need for whole-of-society
resilience.
The Soviet mindset, of which we are now seeing a resurgence, is
quite different. For these people, politics—politik—is
everything. All agencies of the state are engaged. For too long
we have ignored the multidimensional attack on our society, but
that is a luxury we can no longer afford. This also means that
the integrated defence review has, to an extent, disintegrated,
and requires a major revamp which should start immediately. This
necessary intellectual rethink must now focus primarily on
state-on-state conflict.
Over many years, I have posed a question a number of times to
military figures, defence officials and academics. During the
cold war, we based our defence and security posture on our
assessment of “the Threat”, with a capital T, and I have asked
what the Threat is today. Invariably, I receive the answer that
we face a variety of threats, but that is not the right answer,
because the question is “What is the existential threat to our
nation and society?” It is not terrorism, Islamist or otherwise,
ugly and vile though that is. Today we—the people of Ukraine, the
people of Europe, and indeed the west more widely—know the
answer. It is a revanchist Russia and its desire to re-establish
the Soviet territory, although I accept that in the longer term,
as the defence review states, a revisionist China may be a more
significant challenge. That means that today’s estimates are
fundamentally an historical document, as, indeed, is the
review.
That is not just down to the violently aggressive attacks by
Putin’s Russia, but is also, thankfully, a result of the vigorous
response not only from NATO allies but from formally neutral
countries such as Sweden and Finland, where for the first time
there is a public majority favouring NATO membership. The most
seismic public reaction has been in Germany, where the new Social
Democratic party Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has rewritten decades
of German policy of both parties in his historic speech to the
Bundestag. Equally dramatic was the wide political support,
including support from the German Greens.
Chancellor Scholz stated clearly that President Putin had created
a new reality which required an unequivocal response and a
dramatic shift to supply Ukraine with weapons. He also made it
clear that making international solidarity possible required new,
strong capabilities. Essentially, that means that Germany must
invest more in the security of the country. He addressed the
readiness crisis in the Bundeswehr, which has been widely
publicised and has featured in discussions we have had with our
German counterparts. He stressed the need for aeroplanes that can
fly, ships that can set out to sea, and soldiers who are
optimally equipped for their mission. He has designated a one-off
sum of €100 billion to set up a special fund, and has pledged an
annual 2% of GDP.
I suggest to the Minister—I should welcome his observations—that
we may also need to revise the ideological decision made by his
Government, although not by current Ministers, to abandon our
bases in Germany. I do not think the indication that we might
make some minor return meets the need presented by the current
challenge.
This was an imaginative, bold and historic intervention. Scholz
clearly, in Bismarck’s phrase, heard God’s footsteps marching
through history, and managed to catch on to His coattails as He
marched past. I hope that our Ministers see the significance of
that intervention, and engage rapidly and deeply with our German
colleagues to build on this new reality. I hope they will also
engage with our own defence industry. The Financial Times reports
that after Scholz’s speech on the Sunday, on the Monday the
German Defence Ministry and defence firms were engaged in
detailed discussions as to how to ramp up production. The MOD and
ADS should take note, because that is the sort of national
response that we need. I was talking with the industry yesterday,
and this does not appear to have happened, particularly not in
the supply chain, which is wondering where it fits into the
changed environment.
(North Durham) (Lab)
But this has been happening for many years. These are political
decisions that have been taken, and nearly 30% of our procurement
is now bought off the shelf from the United States, with no
commitment from companies such as Boeing to reinvest to ensure
that not only jobs but technology stay in the UK.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is vital to have a
well-established industry to be able to respond to a crisis. The
Ministry of Defence and the Treasury need to break out of the
ideological straitjacket that states that domestic industry does
not matter and we can buy from anywhere in the world. That is a
hugely important change.
The Minister for Defence Procurement ()
In fairness, I must draw the right hon. Gentleman’s attention
back to the DSIS—the defence security industrial strategy—in
which we fundamentally changed our process of procurement. We
have a new partnership with British industry, and in discussions
with them over the last few days they have been extremely forward
looking, as I know he would wish.
I would welcome a bit more detail from the Minister as to the
nature and engagement of those discussions. I was talking to a
representative from the industry only yesterday, and they are
seeing precious little coming through. It is not happening in any
way on the same scale or intensity as in Germany. We could argue
that Germany is doing some catch-up, but it is really engaging
with its industry. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North
Durham (Mr Jones) has said, we give away huge orders and get
little or nothing in return. Even now, the Minister’s own
Department refuses to commit to building the fleet solid support
ships in the UK, and his colleagues in the Home Office are giving
an order for new Border Force vessels to a shipyard in
Holland.
It is worse than that. The Department used to hide behind
European regulations, but now we are out of the European Union,
we should be free to procure in the UK. I challenged the Minister
before Christmas as to whether his Department was going to give a
£10 million contract to Damen in the Netherlands for a special
naval vehicle, and he said we should wait for the competition. Lo
and behold, this week it has been announced that Damen has won
that contract for a vessel that could have been built in this
country.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we look forward to
the Minister trying to give an explanation for that. My right
hon. Friend mentions EU regulations. The reality was that no
other country in Europe behaved like that, but that was one of
the drivers for the British public thinking that the EU was not
working in their interests. Had we actually behaved like every
other European country, there would have been less anger in this
country. Now the Government are claiming that they are bound by
World Trade Organisation regulations, but the United States is a
long-standing member—indeed, a founder—of the WTO, and it has a
“buy American” policy. There is a deep ideology in the civil
service, and unfortunately Ministers are afraid to confront
it.
(Caithness, Sutherland and
Easter Ross) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman is making a most interesting speech. He
refers to countries that are thinking about joining NATO, such as
Finland and Sweden, and there has been a sea change, as he says,
in those countries and in Germany. I am a great believer in the
British public, and I bet that every single Member here today is
getting the same message that I have been getting way up at the
top of the UK, which is that we need to defend ourselves against
the bear, and against the threat. I believe that the public would
warmly support us if we decided to reverse the dreadful cut in
the size of the British Army. I think that that would give a
great deal of strength to the Government’s elbow.
The hon. Gentleman will see that come through in my speech.
I hope this will, if not eliminate, at least reduce the facile
attacks on our defence industry and its skilled, unionised
workforce. Can we have no more ill-informed pressure on the City
and pension funds to disinvest in defence firms, and no more
blockades of their factories?
Likewise, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence cannot
be mere observers. They have to engage, and the Treasury has to
provide the funding to enable that engagement to be meaningful.
They should follow the example of the great Ernie Bevin, who
coincidentally was born on this day in 1881. He had the strategic
genius to create not only the biggest trade union in the country,
if not the world, but the NATO alliance. Furthermore, when
American Secretary of State George Marshall gave his speech at
Harvard in 1947, Bevin seized on a single sentence:
“The initiative, I think, must come from Europe.”
Through his energy and persuasion, Bevin generated a European
response of sufficient weight and urgency to Marshall’s implied
offer of American support, and the reconstruction of Europe
followed thereafter.
Incidentally, Bevin also saw the need to create the Foreign
Office’s Information Research Department to engage in the battle
of ideas and the battle to counter disinformation—that is a
crucial part of the spectrum—not only in the UK but across
Europe. Also engaged in that struggle of democracy versus
totalitarianism were leading Labour figures in the IRD Denis
Healey and Richard Crossman, who had of course also played a
prominent role in the wartime Political Warfare Executive. This
cause is currently being championed in the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly by its president, US Congressman Gerry Connolly, to put
at its heart the democratic values on which NATO was founded.
Now we have to make our defence and security architecture fit for
purpose for this existential struggle. Some of that is about
recreating past capability and restoring our vandalised capacity
for watching and understanding the dynamics of the Russian regime
and, indeed, of Ukraine —the neglect of that after the fall of
the Berlin wall was a scandal—and some of it is about recognising
the relentless political nature of this struggle and funding
organisations with multiple skills to wage it, while fully
integrating our capacity.
I find it unusual, if not extraordinary, that the Chief of the
Defence Staff and the heads of the intelligence agencies attend
the National Security Council only as and when. Resources are
crucial—that is what this debate is about—but mindset and
doctrine are also vital.
(Rayleigh and Wickford)
(Con)
The right hon. Gentleman and I are both former Armed Forces
Ministers. I have sat on the Defence Committee for five years,
and he has served far longer than me and is now our excellent
vice-Chairman. He can attest to the fact that the Committee has
been warning about the increasing Russian threat for several
years. Some of us were derided as hawks who always said the
Russians were coming. Well, the Russians have now well and truly
turned up, so the Committee was basically right. Does he agree
that we must now review the entire integrated review, because
what happened two weeks ago was a complete game changer in
security terms?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his interventions not just
in the Chamber but in the Defence Committee on these important
issues. This is pertinent to a debate on the estimates, because
resources and finances are obviously crucial, but it is the
doctrine, the mindset and the organisation that decide the
outcome. It is the same in Ukraine, where the morale of the
Ukrainian forces, who are fighting for their homeland, is crucial
when facing a conscript army who are not sure where they are or
why they are there. That is why we have to get this right. We
need an increase in the Budget in a couple of weeks’ time, but we
also need a reset in our thinking.
(York Central)
(Lab/Co-op)
When I tabled a written question asking whether there needed to
be such a review, I received a complacent answer from the
Minister for Defence People and Veterans, the hon. Member for
Aldershot (), saying that everything is
all right and that we are meeting the current requirements. That
answer came on 4 March, after this conflict had begun. There
needs to be a review of our mindset to build up the security of
our country, rather than just defending the Government’s
position.
I thank my hon. Friend for that. This very much shows that a week
in politics can be a very long time, but it also reveals, as she
rightly says, a complacency about our situation and about the
international situation, which was not justified by events.
In conclusion, what we have to question today is: is there the
necessary understanding in the Government of the tasks and indeed
the opportunities confronting them? Are they willing to rethink
and provide the funds to implement urgent and necessary charge?
Bevin understood this and seized the moment, and Prime Minister
Attlee backed him to the hilt. So the fundamental question today
is: are this Prime Minister, the current crop of Ministers and
our dysfunctional civil service up for the challenge or even up
to the job?
5.00pm
(Plymouth, Moor View)
(Con)
Thank you for calling me early in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I want to start by talking about a couple of the points mentioned
by the right hon. Member for Warley (), which I completely agree
with, on mindset and attitude towards defence. He was nuanced and
careful on that. As everybody knows, I have campaigned on defence
issues for a long time. I am no expert on procurement and I pay
tribute to this Minister, whom I worked alongside when I was a
Minister, for his attitude towards it. I have found that there
has been a significant step change there. When it comes to
finance and investment the figures are undeniable and show that
over about 50 years, roughly through to the 2020s, there was a
decline in investment in defence, by Governments of all
colours—we have seen that across the pitch. As this Prime
Minister keeps mentioning, we have seen small increases between
2020 and 2022, and the projected increases as well, but I really
want to get across to Members here today and to other Members
that these increases are in CDEL—capital departmental expenditure
limits. The problem with that is that our RDEL—resource
departmental expenditure limits—which is our spending on people,
continues either to flatline or decline. That means that the
experience of those serving in the military continues to go down.
Despite valiant work by lots of people to try to improve it, the
reality is that if we continue to ask our people to do more and
more with less and less, that affects the experience and the
“elastic band” in the middle that is taken up by people who do it
because they are patriots and believe in defence, as many Members
of this House do. That is fine, but they get worn out and are
then pushed into society, and a new group comes in. If we
continue to have that mindset—that we can burn these people out
because new ones will come in—we will see a degradation of
defence capability, which we have seen, and we will end up with
an integrated review such as we saw.
I thought some aspects of the IR were good, but I have said, both
in public and in private—even though it is not easy to say—that
aspects of it were dishonest. I do not think we can truly focus
entirely on our capital spend and say that our defence capability
has expanded so much because we have all this high-tech weaponry
and suddenly have this huge shift to high-tech warfare, while
also talking about contributary pensions in our armed forces for
the first time in the UK’s history. Again, we need to look at
what that means for people who are serving. I remember some
painful discussions about that, and it was quite a lonely
experience. Although the capital expenditure is exciting, we have
to be really careful on our resource spend, which is incredibly
important.
(Poole) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very good point. A smaller military
would find it more difficult to go to train nations such as
Ukraine. We have a very good tradition of having people train
other nations to defend their sovereignty.
That is a really fair point. That was the whole point of
enforcing things such as the Ranger battalions, but it was
founded really on something that is not true, which is that mass
is irrelevant—it is not. Data, technology and all this stuff is
important. But look at what is happening in Ukraine now. Why are
the Ukrainians holding out when everybody talked about how they
were going to get flattened by the Russians? They are holding out
because warfare has fundamentally changed: it has changed from
the cold war—this is not the cold war reheated—and it has changed
from Iraq and Afghanistan. These are Ukrainians, not Iraqis or
Afghans riven by tribal disputes. It is fundamentally different
and the technology has changed it. What can be done with an
NLAW—a next generation light anti-tank weapon—is so different.
When my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham () was in the Army, much like when I was, people had to
fly an anti-tank weapon—it actually had a wire coming out the
back—and basically steer it on to the tank. The chances of doing
that in combat were pretty slim—
indicated dissent.
Perhaps not for my right hon. Friend—I am sure he hit it every
time—but I can only speak for myself and I found it pretty hard
to hit the target. These new NLAW weapons are fantastic. They
require such a low train-the-trainer base that we can teach
Ukrainians to do it. According to a study released last week by
the United States special operations community, 280 of the 300
Javelins that the US has given to the Ukrainian forces have had
mobility kills. That is a ratio that we have never seen before in
conflict.
Let me say finally on the capital spend that yes, that stuff is
important, but if we do not have the right quality of people to
stand and fight, who know that they are going to be treasured and
looked after by their nation—I bore everyone with that all the
time—warfare does not work. We are seeing how it works now in the
Ukrainian system. We need to be very careful in that space.
My hon. Friend, who is my very good friend, has cast aspersions
on how good I am with a light anti-tank weapon and, of course, he
was correct: useless. The point is that this NLAW, held by men
and women who have a basic, infantry-type role, can sort out a
Russian attack that is highly technology driven. We have to think
again about why, when the integrated review is done, it is done
and dusted, finished and stuck. We military people—there are a
lot of us around the Chamber—know very well that no plan survives
contact with the enemy. It is the same for the integrated review:
adjust it. Stop these infantry battalions going, particularly the
one that, as my good friend the right hon. Member for Warley
() said, I was involved with:
the Mercian Regiment. I admit to the Minister that I am biased,
but for goodness’ sake he has only a few weeks to stop the cuts
so that we keep our infantry. They are invaluable in the new kind
of warfare.
My right hon. Friend makes a really valid point. Of all the
decisions that we make on defence, I will genuinely be stunned if
the Government proceed with that reduction in personnel, given
what is happening at the moment.
Let me finish by saying something about attitude and mindset. I
am obviously going to bring it back to people, but let me talk
about what happens if we consistently focus just on technology. I
found the IR quite frustrating, because the focus was on not
making bad press announcements about the removal of regiments,
although we have obviously heard the example of 2 Mercian. If we
have this attitude towards capital expenditure and think that we
can win wars in essence just by fighting tech on tech and that
people do not matter, that trickles down throughout the whole
system and we end up in a place where we are prosecuting soldiers
in Northern Ireland when they are 80 years old. It is all about
attitude and mindset.
I have sat down so many times with Prime Ministers in this place
and they have told me, “Johnny, there’re no votes in defence.”
But that is not the point, because there are some things that we
have to do to keep the nation safe—of course, they may then
become prescient when Russia invades Ukraine and things like
that—and they are the boring part. It is our job as legislators,
MPs, Ministers and Prime Ministers to go ahead, bring people with
us and get them to understand why defence matters. Even if they
are not interested in the military, there is its long tail
through communities such as mine in Plymouth and in defence
industries; there is what veterans groups mean in communities
like mine; and there is what it actually means for British people
to see their 78-year-old grandfathers taken to court in Northern
Ireland for fighting for the freedoms and privileges that we
enjoy in this place, and how that feels for a whole generation of
veterans. It really does trickle down and I urge Ministers to
really think about that expenditure.
(Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech. He is
absolutely right that people claim there are no votes in defence.
I would argue that there are no votes in defeat. Sadly, in the
past year we have seen a reversal of our interests and influence
in places such as Afghanistan and now, sadly, in Ukraine, where
deterrence has now turned into defence. Although it may be true
that it is not popular to spend money on insurance premiums, the
alternative—finding out we are uninsured—is a lot worse.
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend.
Mr Francois
I defer to my hon. Friend’s operational service in Afghanistan
and the bravery shown by our troops on the ground, of whom he was
one. It is a fact that, for all the emphasis on technology, NATO
was run out of town in the end by what some ill-informed
commentators described as a “bunch of country boys”, who did not
have submarines, satellites, artificial intelligence and all the
rest of it, but who still won. My point is that, yes, we need
high technology in warfare, but we also need trained personnel
who are able to use it, and an obsession with technology is not
in itself enough, is it?
My right hon. Friend is completely right. The whole end of
Afghanistan should be a deep inflection point for the west and
our attitude to the utility of force and what we can actually
achieve in the foreign policy space. What does victory look like?
What are victory and defeat actually going to look like in
Ukraine?
(Totnes) (Con)
I am sure that this will come up in the debate, but it is also
about retention. We do have a problem in the military, across all
the services, in retaining not only the people who are playing a
supporting role, but those who are on the frontline. Can my hon.
Friend say a few words about that?
Yes, but I will finish here, as my final points are around the
people. It really pains me deeply how these people feel after
they have spent time in the military. For many of us, it was the
most amazing time of our lives. People like me were incredibly
lucky and had a great time, but there are many people, including
many families, who feel very bitter about it. We have done that
by the decisions we have made around investment in their housing,
health, and education. They felt it when the Prime Minister
decided to take £2 million out of the Office for Veterans’
Affairs.
Clearly, there is a review coming, which I am pleased about, so I
say to Ministers that it would be ludicrous not to reinstate what
has been cut. I also urge them to please think about the
secondary and tertiary effects of how we look after people. It is
not just a lonely, boring old song that some of us sing. Those of
us who have been right at the tippy end of the spear in this
nation’s operations will say that the most important thing to how
our people fight and what makes them fight is the moral
component. Our decisions in this place and how we advocate with
our constituents about defence matter and they make a difference.
I urge Ministers to take that with them as they move forward.
5.12pm
(Glenrothes) (SNP)
I was not convinced that I should take part in this debate,
because I am possibly the least expert on defence matters in this
Chamber, but I do have some comments to make.
Let me begin by saying that I do not think that asking very, very
hard questions about defence spending on behalf of any of our
armed forces is in any way disloyal to those who put their lives
on the line. In fact, I would suggest the opposite, because,
sometimes, it is our responsibility to ask the questions and to
shout about the concerns that serving members of the armed
forces, for obvious reasons, are not allowed to express
publicly.
I wanted to speak in this debate because we can argue—no doubt we
will continue to argue—about how much the defence budget should
be each year. We have already seen the beginnings of an argument
on the Government Benches about how much of that should be spent
on small equipment, how much should be spent on major equipment
and how much should be spent on people. The reality is that there
will seldom be enough to spend as much as we would like to on all
three areas. What concerns me is that, for far too long, the huge
amounts of public money that have been spent by the Ministry of
Defence have not been well spent or well managed. That means
that, for the amount of money that is put into the defence
budget, we do not get the number of soldiers, sailors and air
personnel that we could get. We do not get the equipment that we
should get, and if we do get it, we do not get it on time.
I have been looking at recent reports from the National Audit
Office and from the Public Accounts Committee, which I have had
the privilege of sitting on for the past two years. In June 2021,
the National Audit Office published a report entitled, “Improving
the Performance of Major Equipment Contracts”, because it was
picking up on a catalogue of failures, of late delivery, of
equipment being delivered that was not fit for purpose, and of
contracts going hundreds of millions—sometimes billions —of
pounds over budget. It found that in eight of the 19 major
programmes under way at the time, the senior responsible owner,
the military person with direct responsibility for delivering on
that project rated their delivery confidence as “amber/red” or
“red”. In other words, the people charged with the responsibility
for delivering those projects were not convinced they could
deliver what was needed where it was needed and when it
wasneeded.
The Public Accounts Committee picked up on that report and took
further evidence from the MOD, and our report was published in
November 2021. We identified, for example, that the contract for
four Astute-class attack submarines was more than £1 billion
above budget and the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers were
£2.75 billion over budget. It is easy to look at those numbers in
the context of the total MOD budget and say that none
individually is a huge percentage, but when we think what £3
billion, £4 billion or £5 billion could do to improve the
accommodation that service personnel are living in, for example,
and what that would do for morale, that waste of public money is
simply inexcusable.
The Committee made a comment that really should have rung alarm
bells throughout Whitehall—bearing in mind that this is a
Committee where, by its nature, the Government have a
majority:
“We are deeply concerned about departmental witnesses’ inability
or unwillingness to answer basic questions and give a frank
assessment of the state of its major programmes.”
In other words, there was a cultural problem at the highest
levels of the MOD and they were not convinced that the Public
Accounts Committee, on behalf of this House, had the right to ask
such questions.
The hon. and gallant Member for Plymouth, Moor View () said that he regarded parts
of the integrated review as dishonest; I must say that some of
the financial planning documents that the MOD continue to publish
could well be given the same descriptor, because they simply do
not give an honest and frank view of the challenges it faces in
being able to afford some of its plans over the next 10 years. I
mentioned improving accommodation for service personnel, and that
was not a random example.
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s comments about some of the
decisions made by the previous Labour Government, particularly in
relation to the aircraft carriers, although I would not describe
having those two aircraft carriers as a waste of Government
money. They are an extremely valuable addition to our defence and
have an extremely good job to do. I take issue with the idea of
any document produced by the Department being, as he was
implying, dishonest. We have an equipment plan now that has not
been deemed unaffordable by the NAO. For the first time in many
years, we are balancing our books and delivering on our
programmes.
I am glad the Minister mentioned the affordability of the
equipment programme. I think that plan is dishonest if it
describes itself as affordable, for reasons that I will come on
to later.
Mr Francois
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Given that the right hon. Gentleman is a best pal of mine
sometimes on the Public Accounts Committee, I will give way.
Mr Francois
The hon. Gentleman missed the best bit of the November report,
which was that the cross-party Committee concluded that the UK’s
defence procurement system was “broken”. Does he agree that we
are not going to deter further Russian adventurism with a £4
billion light tank that not only does not work, but deafens its
own crew?
I think the right hon. Gentleman will understand that there are
far too many examples for me to quote them all. I want to leave
some for him. I have no doubt he will bring his much greater
knowledge to bear on the example he quoted.
The Minister said the plan is in balance, but that is not what
the NAO report says. It is only in balance if the Department
meets the so-called efficiencies, which, on previous form, it has
never met.
I wish I had not let the right hon. Gentleman intervene, because
he has just stolen my thunder, but never mind—“It’s nae loss whit
a freen gets”, I think is the phrase we would use in Fife.
The single living accommodation, at the time the NAO started
looking at it on 31 October 2010, was being used by almost
exactly 80,000 armed forces personnel, or more than half the
entire number of people working in our armed forces. Some 36% of
those 80,000 people were living in accommodation rated grade 4 or
below. The accommodation was so poor that the MOD did not even
have the cheek to charge rent on it—that is how bad it was. I do
not know what accommodation standards legislation is like in
England, but certainly in Scotland it would be illegal to rent
out some of that accommodation as a private landlord, a social
landlord or a local authority.
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
I am sorry, but I really do need to make progress. I could talk
until 7 o’clock, if the right hon. Gentleman wants me to, but I
think other Members wish to speak.
The Public Accounts Committee reported that the Commands—the
Army, Navy and Royal Air Force—planned to use some of the £16.5
billion of additional funding to address the backlog in
maintenance and repairs of that accommodation, which at the time
was estimated to be about £1.5 billion. The Committee reported at
the same time:
“However, this extra funding seems to have already been spent
more than once before it had even arrived with the
Department”.
As I am sure many hon. Members are aware, if we listed the number
of times that Ministers or civil servants told us that an MOD
funding problem would be fixed by that additional money, welcome
though it is, it would certainly add up to many times. Perhaps
that is why they are a wee bit coy about giving us a detailed
breakdown of exactly what the money will be spent on, because
once they do that we will find out that it will not go nearly far
enough.
Will the hon. Member give way?
The right hon. Member for Warley () is not looking, so I give way
to the hon. Member.
I have been carrying out a bit of an inquiry into Annington
Homes, which owns a lot of the MOD estate. The MOD is currently
leasing 7,230 vacant homes from Annington Homes. Given the
refugee crisis and the fact that we have 11,000 to 12,000 people
in bridging hotels, would it not be worth investing in those
homes and bringing them up to standard, so that they could be
used to rehouse people who have now been languishing in hotels
for more than six months, not least because many of them served
with our armed forces?
The hon. Member makes an important point, and she reminds us that
if accommodation is lying empty, it should not matter which
Department or public body has its name on the title deeds; houses
are there for people to live in, so whether they are evacuees and
refugees from Afghanistan or anyone else, it should be possible
to give them the kind of accommodation they want.
I will go through some of the findings of the NAO report, “The
Equipment Plan 2021 to 2031”. I think it is dishonest to state as
a matter of fact that the equipment plan is affordable, because
in order for it to be affordable, as the NAO report states in
paragraph 2.7, £3 billion of financial risk was not included. For
example, a future combat air system had an estimated cost in its
business case up to 2031 of between £10 billion and £17 billion.
The equipment plan allocates £8.65 billion, so that one project
alone is, at best, underfunded by £1.35 billion, and at worst it
has possibly been allocated barely half the money it will
cost.
Paragraph 2.17 refers to £7 billion of what the MOD terms
“Planned Cost Reductions”—I think this is what the right hon.
Member for Warley was referring to. At the time, according to
that report, the top-level budget holders had plans to deliver
less than half of the £3.1 billion. Some £2.6 billion of it
needed to be achieved by 2025, within the first four years, and
the first of those first four years is up in three weeks’ time.
As the right hon. Member mentioned, the MOD has a dismal track
record, assuming it will make massive savings all over the place
and delivering very little of it. It cannot afford to get it
wrong this time, but I think we all know that the chances of it
getting it right and delivering that £7 billion, if its past
record is anything to go by, are very slight. It is yet another
hole in the affordability of the equipment plan.
Paragraph 20 of the NAO report picked up on an issue that the MOD
does not like us to talk about but that I think is very
important. It states that the top-level budget holders were
“deliberately spending more slowly on projects to keep within
their budgets”.
In other words, they were given a budget to have something
delivered and ready to use in 10 years’ time, but they spend the
budget in 10 years and then the equipment is not ready until
after 12, 13 or 14 years. There can be unforeseeable delays in
the procurement of defence equipment, but if the MOD has assessed
that the military will need that equipment in 2031, and then
someone in the MOD deliberately delays procuring it for any
amount of time, simply to make it look as if they are sticking to
the budget, I do not see how that can possibly be acceptable.
Elsewhere, the NAO estimated that about £12 billion of savings
built into the equipment plan were not savings at all, but were
based on spending the money after the period of the equipment
plan. They were based on delaying getting this vital equipment to
our service personnel. An independent assessment carried out by
the MOD’s cost assurance and analysis service, looking at
projects that make up about 58% of the current year’s
plan—although clearly there will be bigger expenditure on some of
them later—reckoned that those projects alone were likely to cost
£7.6 billion more than was assumed in the make-up of the defence
equipment plan. It goes on and on. The NAO’s conclusion in
paragraph 23 is that
“There is a real risk that, despite the additional funding it has
received, the Department’s ambition outstrips the resources
available to it.”
In layperson’s language, despite the MOD saying it has an
affordable equipment plan, there is a very real risk that it does
not.
Finally, the affordability of the equipment plan depends on
getting an inflation plus 0.5% budget increase every year up to
2031. The Treasury has said it is comfortable with that, but
given what has happened recently to public finances, the cost of
living and inflation, I question whether it is still realistic to
assume that is guaranteed. It is possible that it will be
delivered; if it is not, that is yet another hole in the
affordability of that plan. I make no apology for saying that
where the equipment plan says that it is affordable and does not
put all those caveats against it, it is a dishonest document for
anyone to have published. It makes statements that are patently
not justified, even by the information that was made available to
Members of Parliament and, indeed, members of the public.
We can argue about whatever amount of money is allocated to the
Ministry of Defence in this year’s budget or next year’s, or in
any year coming, but we are failing our service personnel. The
Government, this Parliament and the MOD are failing our service
personnel, first because they are not being open and honest with
them about the financial challenges they continue to face, but
most importantly because surely, when somebody signs up and is
willing to put their life on the line—let us not forget that two
young men from Glenrothes lost their life fighting an illegal war
in Iraq, and would probably be here today if they had had the
best possible equipment available—the very least they are
entitled to is living accommodation that is fit for human
habitation, and to be given the best possible equipment available
to defend themselves from enemy attack. I do not have confidence
that this Government, or any future Government in this place,
will genuinely honour those commitments.
That is why, whatever budget is set for the MOD through the due
process, there needs to be a complete root-and-branch review of
financial management—far too often, financial
mismanagement—within the Ministry of Defence. It is costing
billions and billions of pounds that the MOD simply cannot afford
to waste, and there will be times when it risks costing the lives
of our service personnel.
5.28pm
(New Forest East) (Con)
Not for the first time and, I am sure, not for the last time, the
House has cause to be grateful to the right hon. Member for
Warley () for reaching across the party
divide in support of the strongest possible defence of this
country and the strongest possible support for NATO. It is in
that spirit, as a former Chairman of the Defence Committee, that
I acknowledge the stalwart support he has given to successive
holders of that post. This is an opportunity for defence-minded
parliamentarians to give some initial reaction to the colossal
and extraordinary events of the past fortnight in the context of
what Britain was going to spend on defence, and what it should
spend on defence in future.
In June 1950, five years after the end of world war two and
following a time of mass demobilisation, the Korean war broke
out. The effect of that conflict, quite apart from the terrible
consequences for the people living in Korea, was to cause a huge
reassessment of the amount of national effort that must be
invested in defence in the United Kingdom. That led to a
reconsideration of the level of defence expenditure, and I
suggest that the seismic events of the past two weeks should lead
to a similar reassessment of what we are prepared to invest in
defence in the United Kingdom in the 21st century. We cannot
conduct this debate as if nothing serious has happened to
transform the situation in the past two weeks.
Although it is very early and the outcome of the conflict is
still very much in doubt, I suggest it is possible to come
tentatively to about half a dozen conclusions, and I will run
through them very quickly. First, I think we can say that the
advanced public messaging by the United States, NATO, the United
Kingdom and other allies has been outstanding. It has prevented
President Putin from seizing the narrative. By predicting
accurately in advance what he was going to do, it has completely
undermined his potential disinformation campaign. Every
pronouncement that we hear from the Kremlin is so ludicrously at
odds with reality that it cuts no ice at all, except with those
totally indoctrinated.
Secondly, the events of the past fortnight dispel any illusions
we might have had about the nature of our Russian adversary. As
has been said rightly many times by those on the Front Bench,
that is not the Russian people, but the people in control of that
great, but benighted country. We must remember that people such
as President Putin are the direct descendants of the regime whose
ideology led them to kill millions of their own people in the
decades in which Leninism and bolshevism held sway. Although the
communist doctrine has collapsed, the mindset, the imperialism
and the brutality have not. I have previously described President
Putin in uncomplimentary terms, and I think it is worth repeating
them. This man is a cynical, sneering psychopath. He does not
care how many people he kills, as long as he gets his own way.
Anyone thinking that there is a way to reason with these people,
rather than deter, contain or, if necessary, defeat them, is
living in a world of fantasy.
Thirdly, in light of Ukraine’s decision to give up—admittedly it
was not a system it could operate at the time, but given time it
could have done so—the third largest nuclear arsenal in the
world, which it inherited from the former Soviet Union, any
lingering doubts about the wisdom of the United Kingdom
continuing to possess a strategic nuclear deterrent as long as
Russia does so have finally been put to bed.
rose—
Dr Lewis
I will allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene, because I know his
party has a problem with this issue, but I do not intend to let
it dominate my speech.
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we do not have a
problem with the issue; we have a problem with nuclear weapons.
Is he not aware that as a matter of international law, as a
successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia was the legal owner
of those nuclear weapons? It was entitled to take them away.
Ukraine would have been in breach of the law to try to hold on to
them.
Dr Lewis
Yes, and I am also aware that as a result of Ukraine’s decision
to give up those nuclear weapons, Russia guaranteed the security
and the borders of Ukraine. If the hon. Gentleman is going to
throw international law at me, all I can say to him is that, if
he thinks that those sorts of manoeuvres and unilateral
renunciations are the way to stop someone being attacked and
destroyed by a ruthless adversary, it should be a long time
indeed before he and people who think like him have any influence
on the way in which we choose to keep the peace—by deterrence—so
that we do not end up in a situation like Ukraine.
Fourthly, this horrible situation should establish whether and to
what extent economic sanctions can force an aggressor to desist.
It is often said that the world has become more interdependent.
We will never see a more extreme example of democratic countries
seeking to use economic pressures to force an aggressor to
desist. If that fails to work in this instance, it will be a
further argument for increased investment in hard defence
capability, because that particular aspect of hoping to be able
to turn war into an outmoded concept will, sadly, have been
disproved. I hope that it does play a part in stopping Russia
from proceeding, but I am not holding my breath.
Fifthly, the conflict has exposed the folly of fuel dependence on
hostile countries and raised questions about the wisdom of a
policy of unilateral net zero targets by democracies regardless
of what much larger countries, that are not democracies, do. I am
not seeking to pick an argument with the environmentalists; I am
merely saying that there is a parallel with the question of
unilateral or one-sided nuclear disarmament, because if we
achieve net zero at tremendous cost to ourselves while much
larger hostile countries simply flout the commitments that they
have given, we will have taken that pain for no benefit to
anyone. Targets must be multilateral if they are going to do
anything other than weaken our ability to protect ourselves.
The last of the six lessons is that the conflict has killed the
idea that conventional aggression by one state against another is
an outmoded 20th-century concept. Time and again, people such as
the right hon. Member for Warley on the Opposition Benches and my
right hon. and hon. Friends present on the Conservative Benches
have raised the question of what an appropriate level of defence
investment should be, only to be told from on high, “You’ve got
to realise that there are new forms of warfare. The next war will
not be fought much with conventional armed forces. It will be
fought in cyber-space or even in space itself.” Of course, there
are new and serious threats—potentially fatal threats—in those
two newer areas of conflict, but they are additional threats.
They are not substitutes for the threats that we have always
faced and continue to face from conventional armed forces.
I thank my right hon. Friend—who is a good friend and is gallant,
because he was a midshipman once—for allowing me to intervene.
One thing that the Russians are showing is that to take
territory, people have to put boots on it. But, guess what? We
are chucking our boots out. That is appalling and we must reverse
that decision.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. Before the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr
Lewis) comes back, I think it is important to let hon. Members
know that I will have to impose a time limit when he has
finished, otherwise we will simply not get everybody in. The time
limit will probably be around six minutes, depending on how long
he takes.
rose—
Dr Lewis
I will briefly give way, and then I will conclude.
There are one or two other lessons from the current conflict. One
is the impact of mobile phone cameras and psychological ops on
the way in which a country communicates with itself and the
world, and I think we could learn from that. I think we have lost
a lot of the skills that we had in the second world war and when
we were facing the Soviet Union, and this is one area we need to
look at.
Dr Lewis
I quite agree with both my right hon. Friend the Member for
Beckenham () and my hon. Friend.
Bearing in mind your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will
conclude with one point about the budget itself. During the
period in which I chaired the Defence Committee, we produced two
reports—one in 2016 called “Shifting the goalposts?” and the
other an update to that report in 2019—with the purpose of
setting very firmly on the record what the proportion of GDP
spent on defence had been historically on a like-for-like basis.
It is a fact that, in the aftermath of the Korean war, defence
spending as a proportion of GDP at one point was as high as 7%.
In about 1963, it crossed over with spending on welfare at 6%.
That was all a long time ago, but as recently as the 1980s the
spending on health, education and defence was roughly the same at
just over 4% of GDP.
(Basildon and Billericay)
(Con)
My right hon. Friend, I and probably everybody present in the
Chamber have been calling since we have been Members of
Parliament for much higher defence spending. I think that is
accepted. However, does he agree with me that once that higher
level of spending is determined, we should not necessarily link
it to GDP, because economies can go up and down? There have to be
real-terms increases once that higher figure is decided,
otherwise the armed forces will not know where they are and it
will be difficult to plan.
Dr Lewis
I do agree with that point; using GDP percentages has always been
only a very rough and ready guide.
What was absolutely shocking was the way in which, given that
even within half a dozen years of the downfall of the Berlin
wall—as late as 1993-94—we were still spending 3.1% on the old
method of calculation and 3.6% on the new method of calculation,
whereby the MOD is allowed to include certain things we never
used to include, it then became an argument as to whether we
would even manage to achieve 2% of GDP. Our expectations have
been managed down so far that when, even in recent times, a
number of us have called for 3% to be a target, it was regarded
as being completely out of reach. It should not be out of reach.
The sort of effort we put into defending this country is the most
important investment we can make, so 3% of GDP should now be seen
not as a target or as a minimum, but as a stepping stone on the
way to a realistic investment to meet the threat that never
really went away, the reality of which in Ukraine has now been
proclaimed for all the world to see.
5.43pm
(Caithness, Sutherland and
Easter Ross) (LD)
I shall try to be helpful and keep my contribution relatively
brief. Typically of such debates, it is very good in some ways
and not so good in others. It is very good in that I sense that
on all sides of the House we are singing from the same sheet.
That is good for our armed forces personnel, because they are
hearing a message supportive to them. It is bad in that most of
my speech has been covered.
However, I have read the December 2021 House of Commons Defence
Committee report “We’re going to need a bigger Navy” with the
very greatest of interest, and I congratulate the right hon. and
hon. Members on the Committee on putting it together. It is
sobering reading, and I will draw just two facts out of it. I
will do this because my grandfather served with the Royal Navy at
a time when the Royal Navy really did rule the waves: it was the
biggest navy in the world. For the interest of the House, I will
point out that my grandfather trained at “Britannia”, as it was
known, in the very same two years as somebody called the
honourable Reginald Drax, who is in a photograph with my
grandfather—our ancestors were there together.
I would pull two things out of the report. The Type 45 destroyers
having their engines repaired, which meant that so few of them
were at sea, is a disgrace. We cannot have that happen. They are
now projected to be re-engined or repaired by 2028. That is not
good enough. We need these state-of-the-art warships at sea as
soon as possible—right away—and if that takes extra money, so be
it.
The report also contains a reference to the Type 31 frigates, and
an eloquent argument is put forward that we will probably need
more than the five that are planned. The national flagship idea
has its attractions, but—I have made this point before—if we are
to build the ship at roughly the same cost as a Type 31, would it
not be better as a Type 31? We could have internal alterations to
accommodate Her Majesty, civic leaders, or whatever we want to do
with it, but we should have it as a warship, rather than as a
national flagship that will, in turn, have to be escorted, I
fear, by another warship.
I will end where I began: the size of the British Army. I cannot
compete with the august gentlemen on all sides of the Chamber who
have served in the armed forces, but many years ago I was Private
Stone in the mortar platoon of C company of the Second 51st
Highland Volunteers. That battalion was set up in such a way that
if—perish the thought—something happened in Europe and the bear
began to growl, I would give up my day job and be whizzed right
off to Germany. That was what we were intended to do. We knew
that and we knew it was part of the job spec. I am also bound to
say that Russia—the USSR as it then was—knew that that was how
those battalions of the British Territorial Army would be
deployed in the event of a deteriorating national situation.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Gentleman’s comments about
the size of the British Army and the need to return to the
numbers we have lost over the past few years—the right hon. and
gallant Member for Beckenham () referred to that. In Northern Ireland, we are able
to recruit above the norm of what we are allocated. The Minister
will be aware of that. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that extra
numbers of recruits should be set aside for Northern Ireland for
full time, but also for the Territorial Army and the
reserves?
I would, of course, endorse what the hon. Gentleman has said, and
having had two brothers-in-law who served in the Ulster Defence
Regiment, I know a little about it.
I do not want to mislead the Chamber. I do not want the
impression to be abroad that Private Stone, doubling forward by
half section with his Carl Gustaf, made a huge contribution to
the defence of the realm. But what I am saying is that I knew a
bit about how things were done back then, and it was about
credibility and our potential opponents seeing that we were
serious about defending this country. Finally—then I will sit
down, Madam Deputy Speaker—the point is well made about having
numbers of armed forces personnel to train our friends, such as
has been happening in Ukraine. I have said this many times before
and I say it one last time: if we take the British Army below a
certain size, it will not be such an attractive career choice for
the brightest and best who we need to employ to defend our
nation.
5.48pm
(Henley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. As always in this
debate, there are good things and bad things. I am pleased to see
that the UK remains the biggest European NATO spender, second
only to the United States, but there are also bad things and hon.
Members have particularly mentioned the cut in the British
Army.
indicated assent.
I see my right hon. Friend is nodding, so perhaps he will not
intervene on me, having made that point. But there is another
point on that—the strategic investment that the Royal Air Force
will be making, which I will come back to. I am very conscious
that it is not just us increasing spending now but countries such
as Germany and Denmark. I encourage them to increase their
spending further.
Before I come to the Royal Air Force, let me say a word about the
Navy. Before the crisis between Russia and Ukraine started, I got
the Navy’s leading expert on Russia to come to speak to my
delegation to the Council of Europe. Hon. Members may ask why I
got a naval expert to come to a delegation that has said it has
nothing to do with the security apparatus of Europe. The reason
is that I do not buy that argument and actually what the
rear-admiral concerned said filled us with a tremendous amount of
horror. He pointed out Russia’s interest in the Baltic passages
in particular and, more generally, how ill-equipped we were to be
able to deal with that. I therefore ask for more investment to be
made in that area.
Something like £2 billion of strategic investment is to be made
in the Royal Air Force. I think that that should be increased. If
Russia has taught us anything, it is that investment in tanks is
not a very good investment. If we look at Ukraine, a huge amount
of anti-tank missiles are there already and something as fleet of
foot as the Royal Air Force is to be commended. I do not want to
set a hare running, but I hope that the Minister can confirm that
bases such as RAF Benson are not earmarked for closure. They play
a vital role and Benson does in particular in looking after the
helicopters that we use all the time in our Air Force. They also
have another use; they provide training.
(West Aberdeenshire and
Kincardine) (Con)
I had the privilege of visiting RAF Benson just a couple of weeks
ago and I reiterate my hon. Friend’s comments on that base’s
contribution to training the next generation of helicopter pilots
and supporting the wider RAF and, indeed, the local community. I
echo his remarks and hope that the Minister will confirm that
Benson is not earmarked for closure.
I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks and support. I was going
to mention some of that training—and, indeed, some of the
training that I have gone through there. Benson is home to CAE, a
company that provides a tremendous amount of simulator training
for the RAF. He will no doubt be pleased to know that I flew a
Chinook and a Puma on the simulator so successfully that I did
not crash them. I think that is a tribute to the success of the
training, rather than to my dexterity at the controls of two very
large aircraft.
On the relationship with companies that provide equipment and
larger things to the military, over the years I have tried to put
across to the Minister’s Department the idea of a conflict
avoidance board for such projects. They work incredibly well in
industry. People who are skilled in mediation sit on them and
their aim is to stop something becoming a conflict. As we all
know, all projects have such problems during their lives and
conflict avoidance boards are good at ensuring that we can avoid
such conflicts. What is the benefit of that? It goes straight to
the heart of the budget. Doing that is much cheaper than spending
vast amounts of money going through the courts, with QCs and
whoever else is needed to settle a particular argument. I urge
the Minister to look at the scheme again for his larger projects.
The feedback that I got was closer to a kick in the teeth than
anything else, yet I think the boards have tremendous potential.
On that note, I will finish and allow somebody else to take
over.
5.55pm
(North Durham) (Lab)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley () for opening the debate. He is
right that our thoughts today are with the people of Ukraine and
the brave servicemen and women, and civilians, who are resisting
the might and cruelty of Putin’s war machine. As the right hon.
Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) said, that focuses our
minds in our debate on defence.
We need to ask how we have ended up with the smallest Army in our
history. That has not happened by accident; it is a political
choice. In 2010, a Conservative party came into power, in the
coalition Government, that had argued before the election for
more spending on everything in defence, but then, suddenly, they
got into a programme of austerity, under the cloud of a mythical
£38 billion black hole that the bad Labour Government had left
them. That never existed and we know that because within two
years, it seemed to have disappeared, given what the Government
said.
That Government cut the budget by 16% because the Treasury wanted
money out of that budget. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View
() asked why this was about
people—well, it was about people because that is how to get money
quickly out of a budget. The Government did things such as making
people take compulsory redundancy and losing people with vast
experience, and it was absolutely shameful. If a Labour
Government had done that, frankly, there would have been an
outcry.
Is my right hon. Friend not shocked that that Government did not
learn lessons from the cuts in personnel under Options for Change
after the end of the cold war, which led to the same collapse in
morale and loss of experience?
Mr Jones
My right hon. Friend is right, but these measures were not about
that. They were about the Treasury making austerity cuts. We now
have a situation where the present Government—who, again, talk in
slogans—talk about the biggest cash injection ever. The budget
will still be lower in real terms than it was in 2010. The fact
is that, like the right hon. Member for New Forest East, I would
agree with increasing the defence budget, but we have to
recognise how we got to where we are today.
Interestingly, there is clearly some thinking going on in the
MOD, because I asked a parliamentary written question last week,
which I tend to do, as the Minister knows, on whether the cuts
would be reversed. I would have expected to get a reply within
days, but last night, I got a holding reply saying that the
question of whether the MOD would reverse the decision on
reducing the Army to 73,000 personnel could not be answered in
the normal timescale, so I suspect that a lot of work is going on
in the MOD on that. It has to look at that, because everyone who
has spoken in this debate has said that, although we can have
enough equipment and the concepts of war, at the end of the day,
we need people. That is key.
As Members know, I have always been an advocate for defence and I
would argue for more defence spending, but I think that argument
will fall on deaf ears a lot if we look at the way that this
matter is being managed internally in the MOD. The NAO report is
a bit like groundhog day: every year it comes back with a
catalogue of delays and overspends. Whatever the Minister says, I
am sorry, but he should just read the report. The budget is not
in surplus. It misses things out and looks at efficiencies. But
it has been like this for the past 10 years, and efficiencies
have never been achieved and never will be.
It is important that we use defence expenditure, if we actually
get it, to generate capacity in the UK defence industry and
ensure that we get the equipment we want. I welcome things like
the national shipbuilding strategy, but I am appalled that, even
this week, the MOD has given a £10 million contract to a Dutch
yard for a vessel that could have been built here. The right hon.
Member for Ludlow () has done a very good report
that says that we should take social value into account when
awarding contracts. I have asked the Department and now the
National Audit Office to tell me what the formula is for
that.
We are buying off the shelf from the United States and others,
without any commitment to supporting our native shipbuilding and
defence sector. I am one of the people arguing for more on
defence, but I want to ensure that there is a proper defence
industrial strategy behind it, not only to deliver for our armed
forces, but to ensure that we get jobs and prosperity here. I see
no evidence of that at the moment.
The last thing I would like to talk about is the nuclear
deterrent. As the House knows, I have always been an advocate for
our continuous at-sea deterrence, and these times have brought
its importance into sharp focus. It will be important for the
Department to ensure that the programme not only has finance
behind it, but is actually on target. People have talked about
the guarantees that Ukraine was given; whatever Putin guarantees
is completely worthless, but the one guarantee that we have
behind us is the nuclear deterrent. It is important that we
maintain it.
These are dark times. We will hear a lot of instant judgments
about what is happening in Ukraine, but we cannot have armed
forces without people, and we have to invest in those people. It
is not just about numbers, but about making sure that we have the
right skillsets and that they continue. Frankly, the IR is now
redundant and has to be revisited. And can we get away from the
slogan “global Britain”? It is a great slogan, but it suggests
that we are going to rule the waves and send power around the
world. We will not, on our defence budget, and we never will
again.
We have to ensure that we invest in what we are good at. It might
be unpalatable for some Government Members, but we have to work
with our European colleagues in NATO to ensure that we deliver a
deterrent effect—I was going to say “on the Soviet Union”, and
actually there is not much difference between that and Putin’s
ideology and the way he is doing things. We have to ensure that
that happens and is done in a coherent way. We have to get away
from the rhetoric. Let us have a proper defence budget that is
not only in balance, but puts the investment where it counts.
I will break the habit of a lifetime and agree with the hon.
Member for Plymouth, Moor View, who has just come back into the
Chamber: we have to invest in people. We can have all the best
equipment in the world, but without the people, the skillsets and
the right mix, we will not get a deterrent effect or treat our
people right, as they deserve.
6.03pm
(Poole) (Con)
It is quite clear that since we ran down our defence
establishment following the cold war, events have proved that we
need to spend a lot more on defence. One thing about the cold war
was that it froze a lot of conflicts in the world, because it
involved the two great powers. Since we ran down our defence
spending in the 1990s, we have been committed for years and years
to several conflicts, firing in some and peacekeeping in others,
so there has been a tremendous strain on the military budget over
a long period.
The strength and value of our defence establishment is in the
leadership, training, tradition and morale of its people. Our
services have quite often been deployed with kit that is older or
is not that good, but because of the quality of those men and
women, they have been able to fulfil their task. What is coming
out clearly from this debate is that we need more boots in the
military, because that gives us a lot of options.
One thing we know is that while Ukraine has a defence
establishment of about 200,000, it has 400,000 veterans in the
Donbas, it has militia and volunteers and there are probably
several hundred thousand people with Kalashnikovs running around,
which is why the Russians are having a terrible problem. Being
armed with modern anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles adds a
little bit of edge to that.
I think we need to revisit the integrated defence review, and I
think we will need to spend more on defence. If Members disagree
with that, they should talk to their constituents, because I
think most of our constituents realise that this is one area in
which we have to get it right. We need only look at a country
where, in blocks of flats, schools and hospitals, children are
being killed to realise that our own first duty as a country is
to defend our realm—within NATO, but we must also have the
ability to do this ourselves, because ultimately it is our
responsibility to protect our fellow citizens.
This is, I think, a wake-up call for us, and I am sure that the
Government will listen to what people are saying. The only
question is whether we end up at 3% quickly or slowly, because I
think that that will be the direction of travel. We need new kit,
but it is it is clear that unless we increase the defence budget,
we will not retain the personnel and secure the equipment that we
need to remain a substantial military power. There are items in
the review that we were going to do without for a while, such as
AWACS—the airborne warning and control system—and I think that
that is very short-sighted.
Let me say to the Minister that I think the Ministry of Defence
will receive substantial support, from some Opposition Members
and certainly from many Conservative Back Benchers, for a review
of where we are now and where we are going to go. History does
repeat itself. Sometimes we think it will not because no one will
be stupid enough to do what people have done before, but we need
only look at the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-40 to see many
parallels with what is taking place now.
This country has much to be proud of in its support for Ukraine.
I would not particularly like us to be fighting tanks at the
moment, because I suspect that we are rather short of anti-tank
missiles—I hope the Minister is ordering new ones just in
case—but the simple truth is that we need air power, we need more
power in the form of ships to support our aircraft carriers, and
we need more of our Army personnel.
As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View
(), people have been training
the Ukrainians for seven years, and some 22,000 have now been
trained. I am sure they are putting that training to very good
use at the moment in fighting for their survival. The British
Army, even when it is not fighting, can help our friends by using
its skills and abilities to ensure that the military in other
countries gain the benefit of our experience. Of course, we have
been at the other end of wars, driving along roads when people
have shot at us, and we have learned many lessons over the years
that we can impart to our friends.
I also think—my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East
(Dr Lewis) understands this—that we should take on the lessons
about psychological ops, propaganda and putting one’s own side of
the story. Communicating with people is very important, and the
Ukrainians, whatever their military skills, have the support of
the world because they were quick to do that. The Russians may be
just a Soviet tribute act, but they are behaving in exactly the
way the Soviets would have behaved, spreading disinformation and
not being honest with people. I have been amazed at the bravery
of ordinary Russian citizens who, although they do not get the
full truth from their media, have been willing to demonstrate and
to be arrested and beaten. I wonder how I would behave if, living
in Moscow or St Petersburg, I opposed an invasion. Would I be
brave enough, or would my family be brave enough, to demonstrate
in the same way? People show courage in tremendously different
ways. You can be brave on the battlefield, but not quite so brave
when you think you are going to be beaten over the head by a
policeman or chucked into jail.
I think that the direction of travel in defence has to be more
resources. We have to look at the integrated defence review.
There will be a great deal of support from Conservative Members
for moving from 2%—however the figures were added up—towards 3%
or more. As a rich nation we can afford to do that, and I think
we would be foolish not to do it, because at the end of the day
everything else is trivial if people are in the situation that
the Ukrainians are in.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I want to start the wind-ups at 6.30 pm, and I have four speakers
left. That means that I will have to reduce the time limit to
five minutes per speaker.
6.09pm
(Totnes) (Con)
I will try to be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was struck by a
letter in The Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago from Lieutenant
General Sir James Bucknall. It is short, and it should be
required reading for all Members. His final paragraph ends with
the line:
“There needs to be an honest, unvarnished appraisal of our
current capabilities.”
As has already been said by my right hon. and gallant Friend the
Member for Beckenham (), plans do not survive first contact, and in these
instances we need to review them, and to do so at pace.
There are just four points that would like to make in this
debate, because I suspect that all the other points I would have
made have already been made far more articulately and far better
than I could have made them. The first is on recruitment, which
my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View () mentioned. It is
extraordinary that the stats for the Royal Navy, the Royal Air
Force and the Army are all higher. In the 12 months running up to
30 September 2021, the Royal Navy had an uplift in recruitment of
4.3%, the Army had an uplift of 25.2% and the RAF had an uplift
of 8.2%. The staggering difference between the three services and
the way in which the Army succeeds show that there are lessons to
be learned by the RAF and the Navy on how they can encourage that
level of recruitment.
As I said earlier in my intervention on my hon. Friend, the
concern I have is about outflow and retention. Even the briefing
document we were given for this debate talks about the fact that
there is a problem with staffing and retention in the Defence
Nuclear Organisation, and it is not just limited to that area. It
also occurs in the Army and the Air Force, and in some of the
places where we really want to have our staff because there is a
national security need for it. This needs to be addressed
immediately, and I hope that the Government will be able to give
some clarity in their summing up.
On housing, a number of Members have touched on the idea that we
must ensure that our armed forces personnel are given the best
services and that they have the equipment they need. That point
also stands for their families and for the housing and
accommodation they are given. I am proud that I have the
Britannia Royal Navy College in my constituency, as Private Stone
said earlier, but we occasionally have a problem there when we
find it difficult to staff people who are coming down to train
future recruits, and to put them into suitable housing within the
vicinity. We have been fortunate in that we have always managed
to get through those difficult situations, but the problem is
going to become greater, because house prices in coastal areas
such as mine are shooting through the roof. I respectfully ask
the Minister to refer to some points on housing for armed forces
personnel, because this is going to come up time and again.
I think I have been very clear in my time in this place about my
support for international development and the aid budget. One of
the things that came up when we were having the debate around
foreign aid was whether we should look at certain reforms, and if
we return to 0.7%, I would really like us to look at ways in
which some of that money could be spent through the Ministry of
Defence to support our armed forces to undertake humanitarian
missions. There is real value in those sorts of things—
indicated dissent.
The right hon. Gentleman is shaking his head. Fine, but I think
there is real value in having the ability to unilaterally send in
humanitarian forces using our defence budget.
The last point I would like to make is that our military
academies have extraordinary export value. We attract an enormous
number of foreign students who come through them and pass out,
and we should cultivate that further. I am particularly pleased
that the current captain of the Britannia Royal Navy College,
Captain Roger Readwin, has done a fantastic job in attracting
cadets from all over the world to pass through this historic
college. More of that would not only give us the ability to learn
from other countries but ensure that we strengthened our defence
relationships with countries around the world.
The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) says that he
does not like slogans. Well, I like “global Britain”, but I think
it needs to be fleshed out. If we are going to talk about global
Britain, we have to prove it in the things that we do. I have
said before that this is about the four pillars of trade,
defence, diplomacy and development. If we can ensure that our
defence is linked with other countries around the world and that
we can help to train people in this country, that will send a
strong, positive message and provide us with armed forces that
are able to respond to some of the problems we are facing. The
fragility of the world is more apparent than ever. If we are to
play a part in global Britain and if that is to have real
meaning, we must adapt as well as update.
6.14pm
(South Dorset) (Con)
I would be inept if I did not praise our Ukrainian friends and
allies who are fighting with such courage against such appalling
odds with little more than the kit we have given them and their
training. It really is awe-inspiring and humbling to see what is
being done by them, their population and their President, who
spoke so movingly in this Chamber.
I thank the members of the Defence Committee, on which I sit.
They all do a fantastic job, including the right hon. Members for
Warley () and for North Durham (Mr
Jones), who are passionate about the defence of our country and
ensuring it is properly paid for.
I also praise the Minister, with whom I have had many dealings.
He is an honourable man of great integrity, and he wants to do
the best he can for our armed forces. I hope he will take
everything we have said back to his boss.
In 1981 or 1982, when I was a soldier, I was taken on a
top-secret mission to be shown where we would fight the Russians
if they came west. When I asked the general in charge how long we
would have to live, he said, “On the moment of contact, when the
artillery falls on your position, you have about 40 seconds.” I
thought, “Well, that’s time to say a few prayers, and that will
be it.” We all felt it was surreal. Yes, we were professional
soldiers, but to us it was a day out and it could not possibly
happen, could it?
Forty years later, we face an aggressive Russian bear that is
taking on a democratic country, taking it over and subjugating
it. Like many colleagues and many people to whom I have spoken, I
fear Russia will not stop there. Mr Putin’s dream is to have the
Soviet Union back in its original shape. My fear is that he will
next go south to the non-NATO countries, based on the fact we
have done nothing militarily, except to offer military help,
following the invasion of Ukraine.
I am not saying that we should get involved in Ukraine. I think
we have adopted the right stance. Obviously, as I have said
before, if Russia takes one step into a NATO country, we will
have to fight, but with what? The cupboard is threadbare, in my
humble opinion. I have sat on the Defence Committee, and I served
my Queen and country for nine years, so I know what has happened
to our armed forces.
I am particularly concerned about the Army. The hon. Member for
Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross () mentioned my esteemed
grandfather Admiral Drax, who sadly passed away many years ago.
If he were alive today, I am sure he would be in this Chamber
right now, or being kept out by force, to tell the Minister that
the Royal Navy—the senior service, as my grandfather and father,
who also served in the Royal Navy, always called it—needs more
ships and more equipment, and all the rest. I absolutely
concur.
The evidence I receive from those serving in the Army, including
many sons of friends, is that the battalions have been hollowed
out to save cap badges, because it would be politically
embarrassing if we again saw regiments amalgamating or
disappearing. This would be quite unacceptable if, God forbid,
the Russian bear puts a foot into a NATO country and our young
men and women are sent to fight in perhaps not a world war but
certainly a huge war in Europe. A full, properly manned battalion
represents years of history, fighting and experience. Hollowing
out the battalions now for political expediency is totally
unacceptable.
When I joined my battalion in Bahrain in 1969, it was 750 strong.
When I commanded it in 1991, it was 525. It is now less than
that, but it is still called a battalion.
Absolutely, my right hon. Friend makes my point.
Before I sit down, may I just refer to my hon. Friend the Member
for Henley (), who touched on tanks? It is
worth pointing out that we must not be fooled about them. One
hears that they are a thing of the past and they are vulnerable
to anti-tank missiles and so forth—to the Ukrainians’ great
credit, they are showing that. However, one has to remember that
the Ukrainians are in a defensive position, in trenches, fighting
a defensive battle against armour that is coming at them.
Fortunately, the Russians are proving themselves to be inept in
using their armour, which is vulnerable to this sort of defence.
But where the tank is vital and will still be needed, despite the
fact that I understand that we have only two such regiments left,
is if we have an offensive operation or if defence requires an
offensive element. We will then need an armoured vehicle with a
big gun to hold ground. Helicopters and drones cannot do that,
but a tank can. All I would say is: don’t forget the poor old
tank. It still has a place on the battlefield, although I quite
accept that warfare is changing. Let me make a final point to the
Minister. Mention has been made of the Special Boat Service and
its aquatic centre. These are our special forces, they want a
proper aquatics centre, so can they please have one?
6.20pm
(West Aberdeenshire and
Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to rise to speak in this debate. I have been
nearly five years in this place, and every six months or
so—periodically at least—we come together to discuss defence.
Usually, it is the same old voices and the same points being
made, and we all go away saying, “It is good to hear a unified
Chamber all speaking as one asking for more to be spent on
defence and for more interest to be shown in the defence
community or the armed forces in general.” Undoubtedly, we would
hear a polite and eloquent response from the Minister at the
Dispatch Box—I am expecting no less from today’s
Minister—espousing the great extent to which the UK Government
were investing more in the armed forces and where it was being
spent. The difference today is that we are conducting this debate
at a time when images are being shown on our television screens
of events happening in Europe now that we thought we would be
witnessing only in history books or documentaries—a Europe of
1942, not of 2022. That puts this debate into context. We are
talking about defence spending and the estimates, so the debate
gives us the chance to interrogate the MOD’s expenditure and to
look at wider defence spending. As I was mentioning those on the
Treasury Bench, I must pay tribute to the excellent work that
Ministers, specifically those in this Department, have been doing
over the past few weeks, keeping us all informed, carrying the
message to the British public about what we are doing to support
the Ukrainian people and ensuring that the Ukrainian armed forces
got the training and the equipment that they need to stop Russia
and to stop Vladimir Putin doing what he is doing.
I wish to make two points. The first is on the continual debate
about percentage spending. We should always remember that 2% is
the minimum we are expected to spend on defence by NATO. We now
need to look very much at what that 2% is. What does the 2% mean
when it comes to UK defence spending? A 2016 report by the
Defence Committee called “Shifting the goalposts?” showed that
now the 2% includes war pensions, contributions to United Nations
peacekeeping, pensions for retired civilian MOD personnel and MOD
income, among other things. Fair enough, if that is to be
included in defence spending, that is to be included in defence
spending, but we should not for one minute assume that if we are
saying we are spending 2% of GDP on defence, it is being spent on
defence equipment or on personnel; it now covers a far bigger,
wider range of things than it used to when we were calculating
what we were contributing to the overall NATO budget.
The report also said:
“The 2% pledge, while necessary, may not be sufficient. We
believe that the focus should not be merely on a headline figure,
but on whether this expenditure can possibly provide a sound
defence for the UK.”
Never has that been more true than today, given what we are
witnessing in Europe. As has been said time and time again, mass
still matters. When the integrated review was published last
year, I welcomed much of it. I think we do need to invest in
cyber and psy-ops—psychological operations—and we need to spend
more on the Royal Navy, in a period when our need to be in charge
of the seas, to protect freedom of navigation, especially in the
South China sea, with our allies over there, is very important.
But it is absolutely true that, as so many Members have said
today, a plan survives only until first contact with the enemy.
We must now look at the assumptions made in the integrated
review, because they are simply out of date. I am not saying we
should review the review—goodness me, we all know how much time
and effort is taken by defence reviews in general—but it is
essential that we look at what we are currently doing and at
where we will spend money in the near future.
It is simply inconceivable that we are about to reduce the size
of our Army by 10,000 personnel. At a time when allies of ours
are being invaded by an aggressive foe, it is simply untenable
for us to send the signal that we are reducing the size of our
armed forces. That has to be looked at again. I echo the words of
so many of my colleagues when I say that we really must increase
spending on defence. Defence is not a luxury item, a “might have”
or an addition; it is essential to who we are and what we deliver
for our allies around the world. We do deliver for our allies
around the world, but we need to ensure that we do so in the most
efficient manner possible.
6.25pm
(Yeovil) (Con)
As we have heard time and again today, we need to spend more on
defence. This really could not be a graver time for the world. I
do not think any of us in the House imagined that we would be in
such a position, discussing this issue in these circumstances.
Sadly, I think our armed forces are going to have a lot more to
do over the coming years so we need to make sure that we fund and
equip them appropriately. As a House we need properly and
diligently to shoulder that massive responsibility.
One thing on which people have not yet focused very much but
which I fear will be very much the focus of discussion in the
coming years is just how difficult an economic situation the
world is going to be in. Because of the sanctions and everything
that has been going on in respect of our not wanting to engage
with Russia and its exports of energy, materials and agricultural
products, there is going to be massive food-price inflation
throughout the world and in some of the world’s poorest areas,
including the middle east, central Asia and north Africa. I am
afraid that will almost certainly cause grave circumstances for
the people who live in those areas, meaning we will be called on
to help in all sorts of different ways, including from a
humanitarian point of view and from a climate point of view.
There will undoubtedly be lots of disputes and arguments about
such matters over the coming years. We need to be clear-eyed
about the economic damage that is going to be done to the world
and to our economy because of this situation. As a result, we
need to look at absolute numbers in respect of what we need to
invest in defence to achieve the things we want to achieve: we
must not be hung up on a particular percentage-of-GDP target,
because that is going to be a moving feast and I think we will,
unfortunately, be in a fairly major recession before too
long.
I wish to focus on one procurement issue that, in the context I
have set out, we need to accelerate: the procurement of the
medium-lift helicopter requirement that was identified in the
defence review. It has been put out to competition, but the
context has changed—we are not in Kansas anymore—and we need to
accelerate the procurement process and demonstrate to the world
how the UK can procure in a more agile and nimble way than it has
done in the past. In particular, if we want to get the
helicopters into service by 2024, and given the various stresses
on global supply chains, it makes sense to get a decision as soon
as possible.
(Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
May I quickly make the point that competition is still important,
because experience has shown us that, when there been no
competition, we have ended up with poor procurement?
Mr Fysh
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but it is also
important that that happens in a timely fashion. A capable
machine is proposed to be made in my constituency. Leonardo’s
AW149 is not only the best helicopter for the military purpose,
but the best in terms of delivering jobs and delivering on that
strategic asset that we have in the UK, through Leonardo’s
facilities in Yeovil, for end-to-end helicopter production. It is
also the only candidate for that requirement, which will deliver
exports and jobs into the future. We do need to get that done as
soon as possible and to support our people with the best possible
equipment.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I call the SNP spokesperson.
6.30pm
(Angus) (SNP)
I wish to thank the right hon. Member for Warley () for securing this debate. It
is an important debate, focusing as it does on the state’s
ability to defend the people of these islands, albeit under the
current constitutional arrangements. Sovereignty is the precious
prize that elevates countries from the ignominy of sub-state
status. We see the value of that with the brave actions of
Ukrainians, fighting with everything at their disposal to protect
their sovereignty, their independence and the freedom of their
people, and all power to them in that battle.
Value in defence terms can be for some an abstract concept,
especially in times of prolonged peace at home, but in so far as
that has generally been the case for the past 75 years, we should
wake from that complacency now, as democracy fights for its very
survival in the cities of Ukraine. We see in that conflict the
criticality of having the right equipment at the right time in
the right place. That necessarily turns the spotlight on the
institutionally incompetent defence procurement dynamic with
which the UK is encumbered. Even the Treasury does not trust the
Ministry of Defence to manage its finances effectively, and
categorises it in the third quartile of Government Departments
for financial management and capability. I can only assume,
therefore, that there is nobody in the fourth quartile.
Any one of the MOD’s headline failures would represent a
multi-billion pound betrayal of the taxpayer, but the Ministry of
Defence has a veritable conveyor belt of these debacles, from
Nimrod to Chinook, through Warrior to Ajax. There will be a lot
more said about Ajax tomorrow, but it really takes the biscuit in
terms of absolute dysfunctional defence procurement. Creative
accounting with rose-tinted projections, which plan for
undetermined savings to accrue to the MOD’s balance sheet at some
unspecified point in the future, is the culture that manifests
claims that we will see the plan come in £4.3 billion under
budget—no detail, no plan.
The National Audit Office report on the equipment plan states
that the MOD has been
“over-optimistic in their assumptions…of targeted savings”
and has identified a number of costs savings that have no plan as
to how they will be achieved—£4.2 billion of extra spending that
the MOD has not included. The MOD’s own Cost Assurance and
Analysis Service produced an independent assessment of the cost
of projects making up 58% of the plan’s costs this year and
concluded that they are likely to cost £7.6 billion more than
projected.
It is expected that the Dreadnought programme—the largest one in
the plan—which is already delayed by six years, will cost an
additional £2.6 billion. Early business cases for the new
medium-lift helicopter and Future Commando Force show that those
programmes are currently underfunded. In the case of the new
medium-lift helicopter, Industry primes are currently waiting for
the MOD to behave like a procurement organisation that has a clue
about what it wants, or even when it wants it—but that is in
vain. Despite the taxpayers’ large budget increase to the
Ministry of Defence, the equipment plan will go over budget in
the next few years of the plan. Ministers are fooling nobody when
they discuss how they will make savings somewhere, somehow, over
the next 10 years.
On personnel, currently the Army’s target strength will be cut
from 82,000 to 73,000 by March 2025, and other top-level budgets
must make savings by 2030 equivalent to reducing their count by
6,350, while the cost of the MOD’s civilian workforce needs to be
lowered by 10% by March 2025. That finger-in-the-air cost cutting
is consistent with neither basic resource management principles,
nor the new threat environment faced by the west. The
Department’s financial plans once again assume further
unspecified workforce cuts of £2.5 billion by 2030, but it has
not yet announced how it intends to achieve that, and that almost
certainly does not take into account inflationary pressures on
either pay or costs of remaining staff.
Armed forces housing is in a shocking state, as other right hon.
and hon. Members have stated. Of the armed forces members
inhabiting single accommodation blocks, just under half are
satisfied with their accommodation and 36% live in poorer-grade
accommodation. Despite that, the MOD has failed to invest in
adequate housing, and the NAO described its planned investments
as not sufficient even to prevent further deterioration in the
estate, much less to improve conditions for personnel. If the MOD
truly wishes to make the Army smaller but more efficient, it
needs to invest in making it a more attractive destination for
potential recruits, and shabby accommodation is not a
particularly good place to start.
Scotland currently has 2,000 fewer soldiers stationed there than
we could expect given our population share, which is doubtless a
function of the recruitment issues facing the Army. The range of
causal factors is not limited to accommodation, but includes
remuneration. Scotland’s progressive tax system mitigates that to
some extent, with rank and file often paying less tax in
Scotland, while those who live off estate in Scotland pay less
council tax on average, and of course they all benefit from free
prescriptions.
The financial chaos leading to flip-flopping on base closures and
disposals, selling off land at RM Condor in my Angus constituency
and then back-pedalling on that, is not helpful either. What is
the future for Redford barracks, Fort George and HMS Caledonia,
and how long will the MOD stick with today’s vague disposal
plans? This culture leaves communities reeling from uncertainty
and saving plans that are volatile and not credible.
Scotland has 32% of the UK’s landmass and 63% of its maritime
area, yet only 7% of the defence personnel, and no surface
warships are stationed in Scotland. That means that when Russia
comes knocking on Scotland’s door, the Royal Navy is busy at the
other end of this island and takes fully a day to engage.
I have been containing myself during the hon. Gentleman’s speech,
because I know there are other contributions to get through
before I have my own go, but I cannot let him say what he has
just said about the Royal Navy. It is there to protect the whole
of the United Kingdom and our interests overseas. We have a huge
commitment to the High North going on as I speak. We will also
have the whole of our submarine fleet based in Scotland in the
future, including our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, which
is so vital to our interests right now.
There is a lot of chest-beating about the nuclear deterrent, but
much less discussion about the cost of it. We have heard from
hon. and gallant Members how much they would like to see numbers
in the Army go up, but they do not talk so much about the cost of
the Defence Nuclear Organisation, which is 50% higher than that
of the next department, the Army. They are not so focused on that
cost. Incidentally, I note the Minister in his intervention did
not point out which surface warships there are in Scotland,
because there are none.
Mr Jones
They are all submarines!
That is not a surface ship. The UK’s breakneck pivot away from
the European domain has been dramatically overtaken by recent
events in Ukraine. The mercifully long period of relative
stability in Europe is under threat in a way not seen since the
war, so it is clearer than ever that the top defence priority on
these islands is, and must always be, ensuring peace and
stability in the Euro-Atlantic area, as we on the SNP Benches
have long argued. The MOD must re-profile its equipment plan,
troop numbers and finances accordingly. In conclusion, this
debate affords an excellent and very necessary opportunity for
Ministers to reformulate the MOD’s finances, the force numbers
and the equipment plan.
Mr Francois
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. There are breaking
media reports of a Russian artillery strike on a maternity
hospital in Mariupol, which unfortunately has resulted in a large
number of casualties. I understand that the Prime Minister has
condemned this as depraved. Bearing in mind the subject that we
are debating, if anything that has only focused our minds. This
is a tragedy that should be condemned by the whole House.
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order. As I am
sure he realises, it is not a matter for the Chair, but he has
put his point on the record.
6.39pm
(Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr
Francois) for raising that point of order. If anything proves the
heartlessness of Vladimir Putin, it is that news. I join the
Prime Minister, as I am sure everyone in the House does, in
condemning that action.
I begin by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley
() for opening this timely
debate. Like him, I wish the Chair of the Defence Committee a
speedy recovery from his minor operation. In this debate we have
also witnessed the unique sight of my right hon. Friend the
Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) finally finding some common
ground with the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View ()—those of us who know both of
them will know that that is an amazing sight. Both spoke of how
spending decisions affect the morale of our troops.
The management of MOD spending, our equipment and the numbers of
our armed forces are always important, but in the current
international climate there is no room for mis-steps. The
Government must respond to the threats to the UK and to European
security that a Russian invasion in Europe poses. Just as Labour
reassessed defence spending after the 9/11 attack on the twin
towers, we expect the Government to bring forward a budget boost
when the Chancellor comes to the House in exactly two weeks’
time.
Other European allies have already made this move. In the light
of Russia’s invasion, Germany has announced an increase in its
defence spending, including a €100 billion fund to upgrade its
armed forces. Denmark also announced at the beginning of the week
that it will significantly increase its defence budget. I welcome
these announcements. European countries have been quick to
respond to Russia’s actions, recognising that they threaten the
security of Europe. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley
mentioned, Germany’s recent decisions have reversed defence and
foreign policy positions that have been held for decades.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
as
“a turning point in the history of our continent”
and made it clear that, in order to ensure the freedom and
democracy of Europe, an increase in defence spending is
needed.
I want to be clear that if the Government act to increase defence
spending in the next Budget, they will have Labour’s full support
in doing so.
Mr Baron
I was in the House when the shadow Secretary of State made that
announcement during the Defence Secretary’s statement earlier
today. If we are to move the dial on defence spending, we need
the support of both sides of the House. Can the hon. Gentleman
confirm that when the official Opposition ask for that increase
in defence spending, it will not be just a one-off? It has to
match our interests’ requirements, but it has to be
sustainable.
I think the hon. Gentleman has just written my speech for me. If
he will allow me, I will develop that argument further.
Any increase in defence spending would benefit the UK economy. If
done well, taxpayers’ money can be spent in a way that enables
more apprenticeships, the growth of small and medium-sized
enterprises, and for the UK to be a world leader in design,
innovation and engineering. However, mismanagement and delays of
contracts, or contracts being awarded to foreign companies, will
damage the UK defence sector. Unfortunately at present, public
money is not being used in a way that brings the most benefit to
the UK. Without steady investment and supply of contracts,
British shipyards, British aerospace and, ultimately, British
jobs will suffer.
When I speak with industry representatives, they tell me they
want fairness, not favours; all they ask for is a level playing
field. UK bids are competing in a race to the bottom with
international companies that enjoy state backing. The feast and
famine cycles of defence contracts leave British companies unable
to prepare, or to sustain investment in apprenticeships and jobs
over a long period of time. If these companies suffer, we lose
our domestic defence manufacturing sector.
Labour supports the UK defence industry, which is why we believe
in a “British built by default” approach to defence procurement.
Our shipyards and our steel industry are national assets, and we
need to see a clear plan from the Government on how we enhance
these capabilities.
Concerns have been raised by the National Audit Office, the
Defence Committee and the Public Accounts Committee about the
running of the MOD. Now more than ever, at a time when European
security is most under threat, Ministers must ensure that the
deep-rooted problems in the MOD are urgently addressed. As the
NAO suggests, the Government’s new equipment plan still fails to
ensure that our armed forces will get all the equipment they
need. Sadly, value for money for the British taxpayer is not
being guaranteed. Then, of course, there is the Ajax-shaped hole
at the heart of the British Army’s future, which I am sure we
will hear more about in the coming days.
In 2020, Labour welcomed the Government’s extra £16.5 billion
investment in defence spending, with more scope for high-tech
research and development, but the Government’s plan only papers
over the cracks in the MOD’s budget. Too much of that new money
will be swallowed up by the MOD’s budget black hole. The National
Audit Office also states that too little has been done to reform
the MOD’s controls in order to deliver this plan on time and on
budget. There is also no plan to deal with massive MOD waste,
despite at least £13 billion of taxpayers’ money being wasted
through MOD mismanagement or misjudgment since 2010, with £4
billion wasted in the past couple of years alone while the
present Defence Secretary has been in post. Unfortunately, it all
points to the conclusion that the MOD is a uniquely failing
Department.
If wasted expenditure had been avoided or reduced, funding would
have been available to strengthen the UK’s armed forces. There
would have been no need for the cuts to troops, planes, ships and
equipment forced by financial pressures. For example, in last
year’s integrated review, the Government cut main battle tank
numbers by a third. Restoring the Challenger fleet to full
strength would cost an estimated £430 million, equivalent to the
money wasted by the MOD.
As ever, I am listening closely to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks,
and we believe the £4 billion figure is wholly spurious. I seem
to recall that, when we cut assets, the document called it waste,
and when we invested in assets, that was also waste. It is a very
odd document.
I am very pleased and quite proud that the Minister has looked
into that document so well—it shows his due diligence. However,
many of the figures in the waste dossier he refers to came from
the National Audit Office’s figures. I was a member of the Public
Accounts Committee for five years, and sat through many of those
uncomfortable hearings with Defence civil servants. It is not
just land capabilities that have suffered: last year’s defence
Command Paper announced that the entire fleet of Hercules
aircraft would be scrapped. At a cost of about £150 million per
aircraft, the fleet of 14 would have cost £2.1 billion,
comparable to the amount of money that the MOD has wasted on
write-offs since 2010.
I am sure Government Members will ask, “What would Labour do
differently?” In Government, we would commission the NAO to
conduct an across-the-board audit of MOD waste. We would also
make the MOD the first Department subject to our proposed office
of value for money, with a tough regime on spending decisions.
The Public Accounts Committee concluded last year that the MOD’s
procurement system is “broken” and “repeatedly wasting taxpayers’
money”—those are the independent Public Accounts Committee’s
words, not mine. With any spending announcement on defence, a
similar announcement must be made outlining the methods for
tackling waste.
As the Minister refers to, Labour’s dossier on waste in the MOD
between 2010 and 2021 found 67 officially confirmed cases of
waste, the cost of which could have been reduced by better
management. All defence projects carry a degree of financial
waste, but the level of waste in the MOD goes far beyond this.
Some examples that Labour has uncovered are simply embarrassing,
such as £64 million wasted on admin errors. When waste on this
scale is occurring alongside cuts to our armed forces and
cancellations of, or reductions to, armed vehicle projects,
Ministers must ensure the chronic mismanagement within the MOD is
immediately addressed. Can the Minister guarantee that our troops
will get the right kit when and where they need it, and does he
accept that defence spending plans are forcing further cuts to
our personnel?
Given the threat that Europe now faces from Vladimir Putin’s
aggressive regime, it is clear we must do all we can to halt the
cuts to our armed forces. Now is the time to reassess our defence
spending. We must ensure that our armed forces have the equipment
they need, when they need it. We must build a strong defence
industry and use public money effectively. We must respond to the
new threats in Europe. Labour stands ready to support an increase
in defence spending, support our NATO allies, and—above
all—support the brave men and women who are serving in our armed
forces.
6.49pm
The Minister for Defence Procurement ()
It has been a fascinating debate, ably kicked off by the Deputy
Chairman of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for
Warley (). He, like so many of the
Labour contributors to this debate, is part of the respectable
wing of his party. It is, I think, a great relief to the country
that we have my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and
South Ruislip () as our Prime Minister at
this time, rather than the proposition presented to us by the
Labour party at the last election. The leadership he is showing
in these difficult circumstances is exemplary.
This has been a fabulous debate, and it is a sadness to me that
the time allocated is in no way sufficient to reflect the passion
of the contributions and their quality, the huge admiration we
have for our serving personnel, or the vital importance of what
my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (), the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee,
referred to as this critical insurance premium for our
country.
As my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and
Kincardine () said, and as my right hon.
Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois)
referred to so poignantly in his point of order, it is so
shocking that we are debating these issues while war rages in our
own continent—that ghastly barbarity to which my right hon.
Friend alluded.
Like so many speakers this afternoon, I pay tribute to the
extraordinary defence of their country that has been mounted by
the Ukrainian forces and civilians. Last summer, I was privileged
to attend the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s freedom celebrations
and saw President Zelensky among his own people. I would never
have imagined then the emotional scenes we saw yesterday in this
House. As the integrated review recognised almost a year ago, the
view that post the Berlin wall coming down we would enjoy a
perpetual peace dividend could not and should not be assumed. Old
aggressors have been reanimated and new dangers have arisen,
requiring a forward-leaning and agile armed forces. We need to be
prepared to defend and deter threats emanating from Russia and
from states that violate international law in such reprehensible
and egregious ways.
Mr Francois
We have seen in Mariupol today what the Russians are truly
capable of. We must now deter further adventurism. On that point,
will the Minister conduct an urgent review of the operational
availability of all our equipment? Where things need to be
brought up to scratch quickly, will he issue urgent operational
requirements—UORs; he knows what I am talking about—to do
whatever we need to do to have all our equipment on top line,
should we need it, and can we start with Type 45?
I reassure my right hon. Friend that we are absolutely focused on
making certain that we have proper operational availability. On
Type 45, as he may be aware, Dauntless has come out of the power
improvement project and is now on sea trials. Daring has gone
into Cammell Laird. We are looking at ways we can advance that
process, but I would say that we have two Type 45s out on station
doing their job even as I speak.
As the integrated review and defence Command Paper set out a year
ago, Russia poses
“the greatest nuclear, conventional military and sub-threshold
threat to European security.”
The IR also emphasised the need to strengthen NATO, which is
critical to preserving our security and prosperity in the
Euro-Atlantic area.
I thank my very good friend the Minister for allowing me to
intervene on him. The point is that the IR is broken. We clearly
need more people in our armed forces, particularly in the
infantry. If there is a message from the House, which seems to be
in agreement, it is that we need to spend more on defence—up to
3%—and to reverse the cuts, before it is too late, to the
infantry. I declare my interest as an ex-Mercian Regiment
officer.
I recognise what my right hon. and gallant Friend says and his
particular interest in the 2nd Battalion the Mercians. I will not
repeat everything that my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary
said in his statement today, but I ask him to bear in mind what
we have done over the past two weeks to show our commitment from
the eastern Mediterranean, to the high north, to Estonia. By
land, sea and air, we have proved our ability to act fast to
maintain deterrence alongside our NATO partners.
To reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Poole ( ), one aspect of the IR was the
importance of continuing to train and look after the forces of
other friendly nations outside of NATO. He is absolutely right
that 22,000 Ukrainian troops are defending their nation now,
having had the benefit of training with the British armed forces.
As the House knows, we have continued to provide defensive
weapons to their support. In reference to the Chair of the
Intelligence and Security Committee, my right hon. Friend the
Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), having defence assets is
one aspect, but as he rightly alluded to, having intelligence to
inform our actions and showing leadership are the multipliers
that enable us to play an even greater role within our alliances,
of which our support to Ukraine is a prime example.
We are aware of that growing threat. This Government provided
defence with a four-year settlement and a £24 billion increase in
the defence budget. That money, which takes the annual defence
budget to more than £47 billion for 2022-23 and our equipment
plan to more than £238 billion over 10 years, enables us to
modernise and improve the defence enterprise. The International
Institute for Strategic Studies independently confirmed that the
UK maintained its position as the second largest defence spender
in NATO and the largest defence spender in Europe.
Consequently, to reassure the hon. Member for Caithness,
Sutherland and Easter Ross () and his Carl Gustaf, in the
coming years, the Royal Navy will have new ships as our fleet
increases beyond the 19 frigates and destroyers that we already
have, with the steel cut for our first Type 31 frigate, HMS
Venturer; HMS Glasgow in build on the Clyde; and consideration
already beginning of the Type 32s. That will be underpinned by
the doubling of investment in the shipbuilding sector over the
life of this Parliament to more than £1.7 billion a year.
To the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (), we are continuing to invest
in the RAF and particularly in cutting-edge capabilities such as
the European common radar system mark 2, which is a fantastic
radar system, to meet the operational threats of the future. We
are also investing more than £2 billion over the next four years
in the sixth generation future combat air system.
Finally, but perhaps most importantly given hon. Members’
comments, the Army is receiving significant investment. It may be
leaner but it is more agile and will have greater lethality. We
are modernising the Challenger main battle tank; my hon. Friend
the Member for South Dorset () is absolutely right that
there is a role for tanks on the battlefield of the future and we
recognise that. There will be 50 new Apache attack helicopters on
top of the investment of more than £3 billion over the next
decade in the accelerated procurement of Boxer to help to
modernise our fleet and ensure that our Army is better integrated
with its NATO allies.
We have established the National Cyber Force. We are spending an
additional £1.4 billion over the next decade on space. If anyone
believes that investing in those new domains is discretionary, it
is not: only last November, in an act of dangerous
irresponsibility, Russia tested an anti-satellite missile. We all
know how much we depend on space and space intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance.
Critically, thanks to our defence Command Paper, we have reversed
a long decline in research and development expenditure, which has
been ongoing since 1989, with £6.6 billion ringfenced for R&D
over the next four years. On procurement, I know that hon.
Members support the Government’s commitment to maintaining the
nuclear deterrent, as shown by the overwhelming majority of this
House who voted to renew it in July 2016.
We remain the leading European NATO ally, clearly exceeding our
2% of GDP defence spending target. We will ensure that the extra
£24 billion that we have to invest in defence is spent wisely and
appropriately. We will also ensure that, as we made clear in the
IR, with that £24 billion of extra investment in defence, we will
have the armed forces that we require to deter and defend. We are
equally determined that our defence investment continues to match
the threat of the future. I commend these estimates to the
House.
6.58pm
With the leave of the House, tonight the Minister has heard a
clear message. The peace not only of Ukraine but of Europe and
the wider world is under threat and we must restate our
commitment to our collective security through NATO backed by our
nuclear capability. We must also have a reset of our plans and
budget; our defence procurement process; and our doctrine,
intelligence and messaging. I hope that that message has been
heard loud and clear not only by the Minister but by the
Treasury. The first test of that will be in the Budget debate at
the end of the month. Can the Minister convey that message
clearly to the Chancellor?
