House of Commons Hansard Debates for 17 Oct 1995

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The first priority must be a further examination of the cost and feasibility of using the Greenwich site for the tri-service college. I hope that the Minister will tell us a little more about the latest estimates of the cost of the Camberley option or, if he cannot, that he will return to the House and do so in the near future. Secondly, the Secretary of State should immediately withdraw Greenwich from the estate agents' brochures and make it clear that the site will remain in use for appropriate public services within the terms of section 7 of the 1869 Act. If it is not possible to continue its use as a tri-service college, another appropriate public service use--either for heritage purposes, possibly run by the national maritime museum, or educational purposes--would clearly be appropriate.

The way in which the Secretary of State who, as I stressed, has a dual responsibility in this matter, has treated the Royal Naval college site in Greenwich over the past year has been deplorable but, unlike county hall, it has at least not yet been sold. The Secretary of State therefore has the opportunity to repair the damage and act in the national interest. I hope that we shall hear--

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order.

8.23 pm

Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow): I wish to refer to some of the issues raised earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). In the year of the 50th anniversary of the use of atomic weapons against Japan and the year in which the nuclear non-proliferation treaty has been extended, I make no apology for wanting to speak about Trident and nuclear disarmament.

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty has been extended this year but that should not be a cause for complacency about the future. Nor is it any guarantee for the future. Some countries that have not signed the treaty almost certainly have nuclear weapons or nuclear capability--Israel, Pakistan and probably India.

The difficulty is that there is a fundamental contradiction in the United Kingdom's defence policy. We try to convince would-be nuclear proliferators that nuclear weapons are not an effective way for them to guarantee their security. In fact, we go further and suggest that nuclear weapons are not a legitimate way for them to protect their national security because those other nations cannot possibly be trusted with nuclear weapons. At the same time, however, we retain and extend our own nuclear capability. As long as we insist on the importance to us of nuclear capability we do nothing but strengthen other people's perception of possible gains to them in becoming nuclear powers, especially when they know from experience that being a non- nuclear power is no guarantee that threats will not be used. North Korea is a case in point. I hold no brief for North Korea. None of us would wish that state to have nuclear capability. Since the 1950s, the United States had maintained tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea. They were removed in 1992 but in 1994 the United States Senate was urging their reintroduction into South Korea. What are the North Koreans expected to do in that situation? How are they expected to react? That contradiction in US policy has been matched precisely by the contradictions in the United Kingdom's policy.

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One simple but serious question has been asked a number of times in this debate but has been answered very dismissively as if there were no real question to be answered. That question is, what is Trident for? Is it for use in war? If so, where and in what circumstances might the United Kingdom use it? I can accept that there may be some logic in arguing that there are circumstances in which we would have to use Trident. I might not agree with that point of view, but there is an element of logic in it. However, the argument usually used is one of deterrence and the need to deter an aggressor. It is suggested that we have to be aware of the possibility of unstable regimes obtaining nuclear weapons. The trouble is that such an argument is merely an acceptance that proliferation will occur and is inevitable.

We would be much better off focusing on how to stop proliferation and how much more secure we would then be in the long term. I am sure that if proliferation occurs, sooner or later so will the use of nuclear weapons. The biggest danger of all is that proliferation will eventually lead to one or other, or both, the protagonists in a regional war having nuclear capability. There is certainly no record over the past 50 years that the theory of deterrence works in stopping regional wars.

We have now reached a point from which, over the next few years, there will either be significant moves towards the progressive removal of weapons of mass destruction or an inexorable proliferation. The question that we should be asking ourselves is how do we, in our defence policy, help to move that process one way or the other.

If we are serious about using Trident in moves towards disarmament--perhaps in multilateral negotiations--what are the best ways of going about it? Is Trident to be a bargaining counter? There are two possible ways in which the United Kingdom might be involved in disarmament negotiations--as a participant in trading off, which is always a part of such negotiations, or as a broker in some sense. Is there a serious possibility that Trident--for all the massive destructive power in just one Trident submarine it is still only a tiny fraction of the weaponry in the United States and Russia--would carry real weight as a trade off or bargaining counter? What weight would we carry with Trident in those negotiations? I can see no possibility of our agreeing to reduce the Trident capability. After all, we have only four submarines when they are all in operation. At some point, even in that scenario, we would face the decision of going for all or nothing.

We should seriously consider the real alternative, which is to become the first major ex-nuclear power, with the moral weight that that would carry, and the ability to act as a broker that would come with it. We have seen in recent peace negotiations examples of the way in which non-aligned nations can become involved in those negotiations and act as brokers. Norway's role with regard to the middle east is an obvious case in point. Is it not time that membership of the United Nations Security Council is not so directly and obviously linked to membership of the nuclear club?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) spoke about the financial implications, and I do not have time to go through those again in detail. But I agreed with my right hon. Friend when he spoke about the possible impact on our economy, and related the sums that we are still spending on defence to what is happening in the other public services, with welfare cuts and so on.

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I understand the position of hon. Members on both sides of the House who have defence industries in their constituencies, who are concerned about what will happen to the people who work there and about the efforts necessary for diversification and arms conversion. However, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield I believe that diversification can be achieved.

In our economy we have started to develop an unhealthy reliance on arms sales to countries that we know are unreliable and sometimes despotic. I am not proud of the fact that we exported £5 billion worth of arms last year although the world market was declining. Why, in that effort, did 10 times as much Government money go towards promoting arms exports as went towards promoting civil exports? Why is the British taxpayer subsidising those sales? About one fifth of arms sales are paid for not by the foreign Governments concerned but by the British taxpayer, sometimes through tax credits and sometimes through subsidies.

Who is being armed? In third-world countries violent conflicts are being fuelled, debts increased and social spending undermined. I do not believe that many British taxpayers want their money to be spent in that way.

We need more than a review of our spending priorities. We need a fundamental shift in our policies away from reliance on nuclear weapons. We need real cuts in spending and we need to do something about the arms trade.

8.32 pm

Dr. John Gilbert (Dudley, East): I shall not detain the House long. I start by congratulating the new Minister of State for Defence Procurement; I trust that he will enjoy his stay at the Ministry of Defence, which is a most enjoyable Ministry, and that he will ensure that we receive written answers to the questions that he cannot deal with in the time available at the end of the debate.

Yesterday the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell), the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, talked about the Gurkhas. I have not seen an official statement from the Ministry, so I should be obliged if we could be given an official notification if Gurkhas are to be recruited in the Parachute Regiment. If not, the story should be denied.

If Gurkhas are to be recruited, what numbers are contemplated and what terms are to be offered? I am asking much the same questions as the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East. Will Gurkhas be employed on the same terms as the existing Gurkha battalions, or will they be paid on the same terms as British soldiers in the British Army? I foresee difficulties either way, if they are to be in a combined British-Gurkha unit. We should be told what structural organisation is proposed.

I do not share the views of the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), who made an extraordinarily eccentric speech. I take the view that the Gurkhas are admirable in any capacity in which they are prepared to serve this country. We are extremely lucky to have them, and I wish that we could increase the numbers of them who serve with the British forces.

I have one or two things to say about nuclear disarmament. It is beyond me how the Government have got themselves into their present position regarding nuclear weapons. When I consider the list of nuclear disarmaments that they have introduced in terms of

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weapons systems--I am not talking about the capacity of the Trident system--I am surprised that they have not been awarded honorary membership of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Once we had nuclear depth charges; they have all gone.

Dr. John Reid (Motherwell, North): Unilaterally.

Dr. Gilbert: Unilaterally, as my Front-Bench colleague helpfully reminds me. We used to have Lance nuclear artillery; that has gone too. For a time we had cruise missiles; they have all gone. Now we are getting rid of the free-fall bomb, without any replacement. So we have no airborne delivery and no land-based delivery system. We are reduced to Trident alone.

I do not accept that Trident is satisfactory as a sub-strategic system. It was never designed as such. I know that one can adduce arguments as to how it could be used, but I remain unconvinced. I ask the Government what would have happened if Saddam Hussein, whom we all now know had a biological capability, had chosen to use that capability against British troops in the Gulf? What possible response could the British Government have offered-- sending a Trident to Baghdad? Surely Her Majesty's Government did not contemplate that course. Would they simply have relied on the poor British troops having to sweat it out in nuclear protective clothing, leaving them at a great disadvantage in operational conditions?

I am the last to think that we should allow an enemy to dictate our targets or the weapon systems that we use, so what I am saying does not constitute an argument for our procuring a biological weapons capability and using that against the enemy. But surely we must be prepared when we are dealing with people such as Saddam Hussein. It could be anyone else; it could be the Libyans next month, or the Algerians or the Iranians. We never know where we shall find ourselves. Whoever would have thought that we would fight a war in the Gulf? We cannot be reduced to having only one option-- Trident--for a nuclear weapons system. I greatly regret what the Government have done.

Finally, what is being done and what attention is being paid in the Ministry of Defence these days to what the Americans call communications warfare? There is a serious body of thought in the Pentagon that suggests that the next war, if there is one, will involve few immediate casualties in battlefield terms, but will mean instead the total destruction of a country's communications systems. I do not believe that the figures are classified, but I do not have them at my fingertips, so let us say that about 80 per cent. of the day-to-day communications of the United States armed forces pass through the public telephone system. I should be surprised if the proportion in this country were very different. What research is being done in the Ministry of Defence? Is the question being seriously addressed, both in terms of self-defence and in terms of our ability to deter other people? To what extent are our communications systems dependent on the Internet, and how vulnerable will that be?

Have the Government had discussions on the subject with our American allies? If not, why not? What proposals do they have for our national defence in that respect, and what will they tell the British people about it? It is high

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time that we had, if not a White Paper at least a separate chapter in the annual defence estimates to instruct us what our plans are and how much they will cost. I have a nasty feeling that we are extremely vulnerable in that area, and I have yet to hear a peep from the MOD that it is aware of such matters. I do not have the pleasure of serving on the Select Committee on Defence these days. [Hon. Members: -- "Shame."] I serve on another very enjoyable Committee instead. These are serious matters, and there are more and more suggestions in serious journals on the other side of the Atlantic that enormous amounts of research are being carried out by the Americans--and, I surmise, by the Russians and other potential enemies--into the matter. I hope that the Minister will give some assurances on these important points either in his wind-up speech tonight or in any correspondence that he might address to me.

8.40 pm

Mr. Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock): I shall not join in the ritual criticism of the Secretary of State for Defence's speech at Blackpool, other than to say that I think on reflection the right hon. Gentleman might consider that it was a rather fickle speech to make. I believe that most of his colleagues, privately, consider its contents to have been immature.

I want to address a matter that relates to the European Union, and I would ask the Minister to consider this point. It seems to me that membership of the EU provides an implied security guarantee. I genuinely want to know the Government's view on that proposition. It seems inconceivable to me that a member state of the EU could alone be subjected to external aggression, as that would not be tolerated by other members. It would break up the Union and frustrate commerce and the markets, as well as affecting the concept of European citizenship which, while one may or may not agree with it, is nevertheless an enshrined concept.

Membership of the European Union must mean that external aggression on one member state would be intolerable to the rest of the EU. I wonder if the Minister could state whether he concurs with that view? I raised this matter with a senior official at NATO recently who, to my surprise, took a different view. I was genuinely surprised by his opinion, and therefore consider that the matter needs to be clarified.

I wish to humbly, but proudly, speak on behalf of the Visegrad group of countries which aspire to membership of the west. I shall speak in particular, although not exclusively, about Poland in which I take a keen interest. I believe that that country should have its rights recognised by the UK and other western countries. I believe that Poland is currently being unfairly neglected.

Reference was made during the tributes to Lord Home yesterday, by both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, to the fact that he thought that Poland had been dreadfully treated by successive Governments. In 1940, Winston Churchill said,

"The gratitude of every home in our island, in the Empire and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by the odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of this war by their prowess and devotion. Never before in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

About 17 per cent. of those "few" were Polish or Czech-Slovak pilots. I agree with Churchill that the battle of Britain was pivotal in the maintenance and defence of

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parliamentary democracy in this country and elsewhere. With that in mind, it is not inappropriate for me to draw attention to the fact that I believe that we have a moral obligation to those countries, albeit 50 years on. We have not dealt with those countries properly. In the half-century from 1945, we said constantly to the countries of central Europe, "Look over the wall. Look how wonderful capitalism and democracy are." If some of our propaganda was to be believed, one would have thought that in the west the sun always shone and the rain never fell. After communism collapsed and the wall came down, they asked to join our club, but we said, "Hang on a moment." We then produced a load of reasons why we wanted to frustrate those countries' aspirations to be members of both the EU and NATO. It is blatantly dishonest and shameful for us in the west to be frustrating the legitimate aspirations of those countries in central Europe which wish to join both NATO and the EU for a variety of reasons, one of which is the security guarantees provided by membership. Let us look at the excuses advanced for frustrating the admission of the Visegrad group of countries, and Poland in particular, into NATO. The first is the need for interoperability which, in simple terms, means that their bullets do not fit our muskets. There is more to it than that, but that is the broad excuse.

The second reason is the political dimension in the countries. It is suggested that the west is not certain that there is democratic control of the military and that we are worried about the generals. That is an offensive argument, particularly in relation to Poland. A distinguished diplomat to whom I spoke recently said, "You have to see the posture of the generals at the war memorial in relation to the Minister of Defence." I would have thought that we would need a more sophisticated judgment than that. After all, there have been problems in the west with regard to the political accountability of the security services. I remember Watergate and the Elsberg papers, and there is presently a problem in Belgium about helicopters. We are not all whiter than white. There are established democracies now in Poland, the Czech republic, Hungary and Slovakia and, while I concede that there are problems, the so-called political considerations against their admission are bogus.

The political arguments and the question of interoperability were never raised when it came to Spain's accession into NATO. An abundance of Spanish generals at the time had been brought up as part of the Falangist tradition, but we decided that it was appropriate for Spain to be brought in. That was quite right, as I think that membership of NATO was one of the factors which led to the maintenance of constitutional democracy in Spain at the time of the abortive coup. I think that membership of NATO buttresses democracy, rather than frustrates it.

The real reason for delaying the accession of these countries--this is what makes me so angry--is that we are frightened of offending Russia. I do not agree with that, but it is a legitimate subject for us to debate, while the other reasons offered are bogus. Let us look at the question of Russia. In 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill said:

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across Europe, behind which we must refer to it as the Soviet sphere."

Reluctantly, we must accept that there was a Soviet sphere. Hon. Members on both sides of the House and people elsewhere in western Europe now acquiesce in a

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Russian sphere of influence, or almost a Russian veto over the development of the legitimate aspirations of the parliamentary democracies in Poland, Hungary and the Czech and Slovak republics. That is wholly disgraceful.

If hon. Members cannot be persuaded of the moral arguments for the early admission of those countries to NATO, I must say that naked self-interest dictates that Poland should come in. One need only get a school atlas to see its strategic location on the Baltic to the east of Germany. It has a large land mass, and a population of 40 million people. It has some of the best and most sophisticated armed forces in the countries of the former Warsaw pact.

Poland has no minority problems. I notice that the Select Committee on Defence has suggested that there are such problems. I have never heard such nonsense in my life. Of all the countries in Europe, Poland probably has the fewest minority problems. We should reflect on that, and I hope that the Minister will respond to my question regarding the implied security guarantee that comes from membership of the EU.

I am deeply concerned that there are only 12 fluent Russian speakers in NATO's headquarters. That is breathtaking. We are spending money in our defence review on teaching people in central and eastern Europe to speak English, and I applaud that. We ought to spend some greenbacks on enabling our own officers and NATO diplomats to speak, understand and communicate with the Russians. That is probably the best contribution we could make.

I am mindful of the problems of Russia, and I want to be sensitive towards the subject. In that same speech in Fulton, Missouri, Winston Churchill went on to say:

"I have a strong admiration and regard for the valiant Russian people . . . There was deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain . . . towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships."

That is absolutely right, but we do not do it by giving them a right of veto. That is a sign of weakness and foolishness. It is foolhardy in the extreme. It is not in the Russians' best long-term interests, or ours, at a time when things are unhappily decaying in Russia.

8.49 pm

Mr. Calum Macdonald (Western Isles): I am grateful to be called, even as a tail-end Charlie in this two-day debate. In the few minutes that I have, I should like to go back to where we began the debate--with discussion of the notorious speech by the Defence Secretary last week in Blackpool. I wish to discuss the Europhobic tone of that speech. The reality of contemporary defence thinking is precisely the opposite of the direction in which the Defence Secretary seems to want the United Kingdom to go. The reality is that no serious person can contemplate Britain's defence needs today without concluding that, far from Europhobia, what we need is ever closer collaboration and co-operation in Europe, indeed perhaps integration in some areas, if that would produce practical, concrete benefits.

If the reasons for the need for co-operation have escaped the Defence Secretary, they can put up with some repeating, although more than one hon. Member has already made similar points in the past two days. There is first and foremost the increasing pressure on defence budgets. Electorates are increasingly unhappy with high

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defence spending in the aftermath of the cold war. They want to see some evidence of the peace dividend that we were all promised. That puts severe pressure on Governments to reduce or constrain defence budgets.

At the same time, the costs of defence procurement are increasing astronomically. The costs of research, development, manufacturing, and purchasing equipment in every field are skyrocketing because ever more sophisticated technology is now available. It is clear that we cannot opt out of those costs because we must keep abreast with developments, especially as our forces become numerically smaller. They must have the punch to carry out the job that we ask them to do.

For a country the size of the United States, with its economies of scale, those financial pressures are just about manageable. For the European nation states, however, the pressures have become intolerable. The fiscal crisis point has now been reached. That has been clear from debates in the House in the past couple of years in which we have discussed cuts in defence expenditure. The sooner we admit that we are at this crisis point and face up to the consequences of it, the better.

There are only two responses to the fiscal crisis which now faces defence establishments across Europe. One is to give up the unequal struggle and accept a second-rate future of fewer items of increasingly inferior equipment for ever smaller forces. I do not believe that we should go down that road. We have a duty to our service men when we ask them to endanger their lives on their country's behalf to provide them with the best equipment and support possible.

So the only right answer to the financial crisis which is pressing on defence budgets is ever closer co-operation within Europe. We have to extend and deepen existing methods for planning, developing and purchasing jointly the best equipment possible for the armies of Europe. We must also, as a consequence, but also on its own merits, co-operate ever more closely in matters such as training, military doctrine and defence policy. That is truly the only sensible way forward. Indeed, it is already happening to an ever greater degree. That is why the Defence Secretary's speech last week was not only embarrassing but utterly empty of content. All the trends are going precisely in the opposite direction to the one in which the Defence Secretary urged us.

The pressures for European co-operation are not only financial and economic. There is also a political and strategic need for closer European action. We have seen over the summer a resurgence of American diplomatic involvement and presence in European security matters in the former Yugoslavia. Thank God for it. It is to our collective shame as Europeans that we should have to look to the Americans not merely for military muscle but, I am sorry to say, for moral leadership in responding to the holocaust which has consumed a quarter of a million lives in the past four years in Europe. There was no passage more empty in the Defence Secretary's speech last week in Blackpool than his vainglorious boast that

"we taught the Bosnian Serb generals that the slaughter of civilians will not go unpunished."

It is clear that he has a short and selective memory. What about the slaughtered civilians of Vukovar at the beginning of the conflict? What about the civilians of

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Dubrovnik, of Omarska, of Srebrenica and Zepa? At each and every act of slaughter there was invariably a British Minister on hand openly and without apology washing his hands of any responsibility whatever. British Foreign Office and Defence Ministers repeatedly dismissed air strikes as ineffective and claimed that it would need hundreds of thousands of NATO troops to turn the military tide in Bosnia. It was a junior Foreign Office Minister who infamously flew to Sarajevo in 1992 to tell them that there was no seventh cavalry coming over the hill.

Four abject years of European appeasement led by this Tory Government cannot be absolved by one summer of American-led resolution. However, this belated American involvement should not blind us to the long-term trend, which is for Americans to become less and less inclined to be involved in European security matters to the same extent and more and more impatient with Europe's failure to deal with its own security problems.

Europe is rich. The European Union has a gross national product comparable to that of the United States. We have a bigger population. Indeed, we have more people serving in our armed forces than the United States. Of course, many of those people are conscripts, but many of them are regulars. According to the latest edition of The Military Balance published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Britain, France and Germany have between them 340, 000 regular soldiers--not conscripts but regular soldiers. If one takes the regular armies of all the European states that are also members of NATO, which includes Spain, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Portugal, the total number of regular soldiers serving in the European Union is 490,000. That compares with the American regular army of 525,000. Although it is smaller, it is not so much smaller that it would not have an impact if it acted in a more cohesive, planned and co-ordinated way.

We have a duty to look after our security interests to a greater extent if we are capable of doing so. Defence dependency is a vice just as much as the welfare dependency that Conservative Members always talk about. As Europeans, we must get together and co-operate. The Maastricht treaty already commits us to precisely that. Article B commits the European Union to framing a common defence policy. The Government have signed up to that treaty and it is crazy to begin to draw back now. I agree with my Front- Bench colleagues--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order.

8.59 pm

Dr. John Reid (Motherwell, North): That was a great note for my hon. Friend the Member for Western Isles (Mr. Macdonald) to finish on, and it has been the unanimous verdict of most Opposition Members who have spoken.

This has not exactly been an all-ticket game, but the quality of the contributions has made up for that. Anyone who missed the debate missed something special: to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) impersonate Winston Churchill so well in a cockney accent was worth coming for alone.

I take this opportunity to welcome the new Minister for Defence Procurement to his post. It is fair to say that, in his relatively short period in post, his predecessor showed that he had some standing in the House because he

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recognised the strategic importance of the British defence industry. To some extent, we were sorry to see him go as he brought a great deal of common sense to discussion of the defence industry. Despite that common sense, he somehow managed to be promoted to the Cabinet. We shall miss him, but we trust that his successor will follow where he left off. I shall comment on the Minister for the Armed Forces later.

Tonight's debate has been not just about the 1995 defence estimates but an opportunity to examine the last five years of fairly dramatic change in the Government's performance. As the Minister for the Armed Forces said, during that quinquennium there has been a number of dramatic changes and challenges. First, the nature of the perceived threat changed radically away from the conventionally defined threat of intention and capability, which was obvious when we cast our eyes eastward, to a more complex series of risks--a plethora of risks--part of which arose because of the decline of the former Soviet Union. Secondly, the demise of the Soviet Union seriously affected the conceptual framework and the operational premises on which major international institutions had long been based. For instance, it initially left NATO without an obvious raison d'e tre. On a global level, it left the United States as the only real super-power in the United Nations. Thirdly, those changes coincided with, and were symbiotically related to, changes or proposed changes in European defence architecture--a subject that obviously bores the Defence Secretary, who constantly refers to it as "theology". Apparently, it interests him only when it is a platform for attacking those wicked foreigners. Finally, there were increasing pressures on the defence budget for domestic and internal reasons. The Government's fiscal incompetence caused them to scurry around looking for cuts in any budget, and defence was regarded as an easy option.

Before I wind up the debate, I wish to comment on the individual issues that have been raised and also on the strategic issues that we feel are important. As I have already outlined, the challenges have been great. We admit at the start that they would not have been an easy task for any Government. Unfortunately, for the most part the Government have failed miserably to rise to that challenge. Whereas foresight, clarity, strategy and long-term stability should have been their objectives, they have produced incoherence and short-termism. They have been constantly reactive to the course of events rather than proactive in shaping events. The result has been, for the most part, muddle and incoherence.

Only this week, we had another prime example of the manner in which the Government have got us all into a muddle. We heard that our infantry regiments were grossly undermanned. The shortfall--perhaps we will have this confirmed tonight--is to be made up by drafting in the Gurkhas, a point made by several hon. Members.

I have the highest respect for the Gurkhas. I had the opportunity to spend some time in jungle training with them in Belize some years ago through the armed forces parliamentary scheme, which I again recommend to anyone who would like to undertake it to give them some idea of the ethos and spirit of the armed forces. I am sure that if the Secretary of State for Defence were to put in a late application he would be welcomed with open arms. [Interruption.] On reflection, I would not wish that on the

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Gurkhas; perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has already left. After all, they are not Europeans, so he might get along with them. It really does take a bunch of geniuses--the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) referred to his "Front Bunch"--to contrive a situation where the Ministry of Defence has just got rid of 111,000 personnel, 42,000 of them soldiers, and end up short of soldiers. And it takes a peculiar sort of genius when we have 3 million unemployed in Britain to decide to make up the shortfall by recruiting people in Nepal. The Government do not see the irony of the muddle they have got into or the logic of their position. They have spent the past five years denying that the infantry is overstretched; now they are shouting publicly that the infantry is undermanned. They do not have the mental capacity to put the two facts together. Let me help the new Minister with this great intellectual problem. I want to make it easy for him and to try to be helpful. Will he say after me, "If the infantry are under strength in numbers in relation to tasks, they must by definition be overstretched in tasks relative to numbers." I challenge the Minister to repeat that. I will give him a copy of the speech and he can study it overnight. It is nice to have been vindicated on that point.

There are some things in the Government's approach that we welcome. We welcome the increase in the awards to holders of the Victoria Cross. I shall not be churlish and say that it is not overgenerous because, after all, past Labour and Tory Governments have failed to deal with the matter.

We welcome moves toward joint working, the purple arrangements already mentioned by the Minister of State for the Armed Forces. We also welcome the announcement tonight on Rosyth and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) for all the work that she has done on that.

We especially welcome what is now referred to as the long-range rapid reaction force, which was announced in Blackpool last week by the Secretary of State for Defence. We welcome it but wonder whether it is the same one as was announced in July in the House of Commons and whether it is a different long-range rapid reaction force from that which was envisaged 12 months ago in the last debate? If it is the same one, I am very impressed. To manage to deploy that announcement all the way from Westminster to Blackpool in only 12 months is a credit to the logistics corps in the MOD. If they continue at the same rate, I have worked out that they will able to announce its establishment again next year in Edinburgh or in the north of Scotland, and by God, that will frighten the earth out of our enemies.

The hon. Members for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) and for Wyre (Mr. Mans) may agree with me and many Labour Members that the level of contractorisation is worrying. Recently, I was down at RAF Valley. We take a pragmatic approach to the matter but would urge two elements of caution. Remember not to watch the minutes and lose the hours. A private contractor used, for instance, on maintenance of RAF aircraft may be able to put in a bid lower than can the MOD precisely because he is recruiting trained personnel who have been made redundant by the MOD. Five years down the road, if the private company has to budget for

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bringing in apprentices and if it cannot get them from the RAF, either the quote will go through the roof or we shall be left with a crisis.

My second point on contractorisation is that it is not sensible to understand the cost of everything and the value of nothing. I am glad that the Minister of State for the Armed Forces spoke with pride about the esprit de corps in the armed units. It is not an abstract concept of Queen and country that causes a squaddie at the bottom of Mount Longdon, having yomped for 16 hours, to go out freezing and to try to take that mountain from Argentines sitting on the top with night sights when he does not have any: it is the fact that he does not want to let down his mates, his family and his regiment. I ask the Government please not to allow the privatisation of units in the British armed forces ever to go in a direction that begins to undermine that morale.

Having welcomed a number of issues, I must say that the most current issue on which we separate from the Government is their attitude towards nuclear disarmament. I know that many Conservative Members wished to stand up tonight and to say how proud they were to see that the Labour party had put forward a concrete series of proposals within the context of a multilateral position towards nuclear disarmament. Time, however, obviously prevented any of them from having the opportunity to make that gracious gesture tonight. We should still make it clear that we are different from the Government. On nuclear testing, we have long made plain our view that with the advent of computer simulation, nuclear testing is not necessary to secure the safety of our nuclear weapons. The Government obstinately refused to admit that until, basically, a moratorium was introduced by President Clinton. Is it not funny how often this Government suddenly discover a principled position when ordered to do so by the United States? Their reluctance to take such a position, just like their reluctance to criticise the French over nuclear tests, will on its own, even without the help of the Secretary of State of Defence at Blackpool, help to isolate us from the rest of the civilised world.

It is noticeable in terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that many countries that supported the decision did so reluctantly and were deeply critical of the nuclear weapons states. Three of our allies refused to sign a joint European Union position because they were not satisfied with the record of Britain and France in fulfilling article VI treaty obligations to pursue disarmament. The future credibility and effectiveness of the NPT will be undermined unless this Government and one or two others start to deal with honour and pragmatism in pursuit of the nuclear-free world which the Government say, for the first time this year in the "Statement on the Defence Estimates 1995", they believe in and wish to pursue. One item that has not been mentioned in many debates but which was, I am glad to say, mentioned tonight by the hon. Members for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) and for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait) is the cadet forces. Our cadet forces are rarely mentioned. Let us make it plain to everyone that they are not merely a means of recruitment for the armed forces. They fulfil a valuable and much-needed function in youth leadership and allow thousands of young people to develop character and leadership skills.

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My wife and I recently had the opportunity to spend some time, courtesy of the Minister of State for the Armed Forces- -I thank him for this--on what was called a challenge and adventure weekend. It was not an official cadets' activity. It involved groups of young people from deprived backgrounds, inner-city kids, who were at risk. They were not at risk in terms of the probation service; they were not kids who had offended. They were brought for the first time to the countryside-- to canoeing, command tasks and challenge leadership. They were kids who had never before been given the opportunity to develop the potential within them. In many cases, they had been told by their teachers, by their background or by their families that there was nothing in them. The cadets are a much under-used asset.

Incidentally, for those who take an interest in racial and ethnic matters, many of the young people were from Asian backgrounds. They were boys and girls whose parents, of Muslim persuasion, were allowing them to go to the weekend, which they would not normally do, because the British Army was running it. There are thousands of young folk whose potential has been confined by circumstance or by background. The cadets are a grossly under- utilised national facility which I hope, if Labour is elected, we shall develop to an even greater extent as part of a new offer to a new generation. I mentioned earlier the challenges that have faced the Government. Now that the Minister of State for the Armed Forces has arrived --I have already welcomed the Minister of State for Defence Procurement--I take pleasure in welcoming the fact, if it is not too embarrassing for him, that he stayed at his post when all others were deserting the defence team. I say that because I believe that his continued presence will offer at least some hope to many in the armed forces who were verging on despair even before last Tuesday.

I know from many meetings throughout the country that the Minister's dedication and commitment and his persona--despite some of his rather aggressive tendencies towards us tonight--are held in deep respect. He has managed not only to be held in respect by the armed forces but, something which I thought was impossible for someone who is a Minister of State for the Armed Forces and a Tory, some of them actually like him as well.

However, we now have a genuine problem in defence. Of course, none of us likes to deal in personalities--which allows me to talk about the Secretary of State for Defence--but if the Secretary of State continues to make speeches in the way that he did, the persona and the message that is being conveyed will be inseparable.

Last week in Blackpool we heard of a fairy tale defence world, a sort of fantasy defence league, where Secretaries of State were resolute and resources plentiful, presided over by a new warrior king. Let me place the facts before the House. Before we disagree on our opinion, let us agree on the facts.

During the last decade the story in defence has been one of almost unparalleled reductions in defence expenditure. As a proportion of national income, the defence budget has fallen from a previous high of 5.8 per cent. to 3.9 per cent. five years ago to 3.3 per cent. It is now scheduled, under the present Government, to fall to 2.9 per cent. They have, and should be given credit for it, in practice carried out the Labour conference resolutions which they have condemned for many years.

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As I have said, the defence budget is scheduled to fall. It means a cut in the procurement budget at the moment of 19 per cent. between 1991 and 1994 alone, while the defence budget will be cut by almost 30 per cent.--111,000 off manpower, 42,000 of them in the Army. They are, by any standards, staggering cuts. Anyone who cares to check what the Minister of State for the Armed Forces said last night will see that he confirmed that there are more on the way. That should not surprise any of us.

The man who inflicted those cuts on the armed forces was not the Minister of State for the Armed Forces. He constantly told us that he was fighting against them. We have had 16 defence Ministers. The Government have gone through more Ministers at the front here in order to cut the defence budget by 30 per cent. than Scotland has players in qualifying for the European championships. The cuts were not inflicted by the three Ministers on the Treasury Bench. The man who inflicted them, the man who cheered every regimental closure, was the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury--now Secretary of State for Defence. He is not on the Treasury Bench tonight. I do not know where he is. Perhaps he is out having a pint with Jacques Santer. The current Secretary of State for Defence was given a reward of promotion for having slashed the defence budget.

Perhaps "reward" is the wrong word. The problem and tragedy of the latest reshuffle from the word go is the obvious fact that a once-proud Department of State, particularly prided by the Tories, became a dustbin for the enemies of the Prime Minister. It became the Tory equivalent of the guardhouse. The Secretary of State was to be stuck there and the substantial figure of the Minister of State for the Armed Forces would sit on him, as has obviously happened between last week and this week. The news of the appointment was met with despair. Gone are the days in the Admiralty, the Royal Air Force and the Army when the telegram appeared with the stirring announcement, "Winston is back". Hon. Members may imagine the bemused look of despair which greeted the letter saying, "Polly has been appointed". It does not have the same resonance.

As if it were not an insult to the armed services, the hero of this story-- I have not, so far, mentioned his name--is now trying to use them as a bridgehead into Downing street. Last week, he was on active service in Blackpool. In a speech variously described in a very generous fashion as guff, hyperbole, chauvinism, rabble-rousing, poncing and posturing--I have only checked the quality press, because this is a family show--he managed to demean himself, and to debase his party and the relationship between the armed forces and the Minister. No one really cares what he does to himself and his party, but he will not be forgiven for two things: one was the cheap attempt to exploit the armed forces for party political advantage; the other was the abuse that he heaped on our European allies.

Let it be known that Opposition Members--and, I believe, the vast majority of Conservative Members--completely dissociate themselves from the vitriol poured on our European defence partners. We pay tribute to those in Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Germany and elsewhere who have stood shoulder to shoulder with this country for the past half century, and our French colleagues who have acted with us on the political wing of NATO and in Bosnia.

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Incidentally, one would think that after three months in post the Secretary of State for Defence would have been told by someone where the headquarters of NATO are, and where the supreme headquarters of the allied powers in Europe are. In case any of the Ministers do not know, it begins with "B". No--not Bradford, but Brussels.

There was only one consolation to be had from last week's speech. As is obvious from all the comments made on this occasion, no one takes the Secretary of State seriously. It is his own fault.

Mr. Winnick: Will my hon. Friend give way?

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