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The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Michael Portillo): Disgraceful!
Dr. Reid: I am using the words of the Secretary of State's mentor. It is no good him telling us that it is disgraceful. He was standing behind her, cheering, when she was telling us that, for 10 years.
Not only is that completely at odds with the ethos of our armed services: it is a destructive worm at the heart of our social and cultural attitudes in Britain. Thank God people are moving back from it.
Taken together, those three changes mean that, in terms of personal experience, empathy and cultural attitude, the gap is growing between the value system of the population in general and the ethos and life style of the armed forces in particular. How do we begin to face those challenges? Every hon. Member who has the armed forces at heart knows that they are challenges.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby):
The hon. Gentleman has made one or two very good points, but I do not agree with his third challenge. As he will know, I served in the armed forces in the late 1980s. He mentioned the tremendous selfishness of the 1980s. I was commanding some of what are termed "Thatcher's children", and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that those young men were just as good as young men had been 10 or 15 years before. They were excellent. They were honourable, loyal and, decent, and they looked after other people. They responded to all the things that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, so he must agree that his third challenge is a load of bunkum.
Dr. Reid:
Far from contradicting me, the hon. Gentleman reinforces everything that I said. I said that unfettered individualism existed outside the armed forces. People who joined the armed forces out of a sense of public service, who rejected the denigration of the idea of public service, who believed that the individual should make sacrifices for the group, who rejected Thatcherite values, were the very people who joined the British armed forces, and they are still there. Those values are deep inside the British armed forces, and we must ensure that we help to build a bridge between civilian attitudes and those of the armed forces.
There are two ways to do that: the first is to have a vision for Britain's role in the world, in which our armed forces play a significant part. I believe that the Labour party can create such a vision. We believe that, at home, individuals have responsibilities to their neighbours. We believe that that is the same abroad. We believe therefore that we have not only rights on the international stage but responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to create a world order out of the chaos, and the British armed forces throughout their history are uniquely placed to contribute to that role.
The second is to start to restore a trend, which is already moving in the direction of the beliefs that we hold, in the culture and attitudes of people in this country outside the armed forces; to raise again the idea of public service as a public good rather than as some left-wing
Utopian wishy-washy social work idea; to say again that public service is good for the country, not only inside the armed forces but outside; to talk of social responsibility as well as social rights; to raise again trust, honour and integrity as obligations that we owe to each other in society.
Mr. Winston Churchill (Davyhulme):
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid)--who speaks on behalf of Her Majesty's Opposition, and long may he continue to do so--but I do not know where he has been in terms of visiting Her Majesty's forces if he thinks that they lack a sense of pride and purpose. I defy anyone who has visited the British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force in their different deployments worldwide to come away with such a misguided opinion. It is just baloney, and the hon. Gentleman should know better.
The hon. Gentleman has done his best to be consensual today and he assures us that if, by mischance, the Labour party wins the next general election, there will be a consensus within his party.
Dr. Reid:
I will seek a consensus.
Mr. Churchill:
The hon. Gentleman now qualifies that by saying that he will seek a consensus within his party. He will have an uphill struggle because on the matter of defence, and above all on nuclear defence, his party is split from top to bottom, no matter how hard the Leader of the Opposition may try to paper over the chasm.
I warmly welcome the announcement of the appointment of General Sir Charles Guthrie as Chief of Defence Staff. He is a first-class soldier, and I have no doubt at all that his will be an excellent appointment. I also pay tribute to our armed forces whom, as a member of the Select Committee on Defence, I have the privilege of visiting at so many locations in so many of their roles world wide. One thinks especially at present of our forces serving in Northern Ireland and those in Bosnia where, together with our allies, they are holding the ring and bringing back some semblance of normality and peace to that strife-torn land.
It is a regrettable fact that, one year in every four, our great ally across the seas, the United States, takes leave of its senses and indulges in an unashamed 12 months of electioneering. It becomes quite impossible to get any coherent response, let alone leadership, out of the United States during an election year. In the case of Bosnia, that risks being all too tragic, because the President has committed himself publicly to the withdrawal of US forces from IFOR in the former Yugoslavia before the year is out.
Were that to happen--I very much hope that it will not, and that the matter will be reconsidered as a matter of urgency--it would pull the rug from under the allies who are doing so much to bring peace back to Bosnia. It would make vain all the efforts that the international community, and not least our armed forces, have made during the past four years to try to bring Bosnia back from the brink.
It is essential that a successor to IFOR, with US participation, should go forward and that that should be announced at the earliest possible moment. It may be on a reduced level. That is not important. What is important is that the United States is there and that it forms part of the alliance engaged on the ground in Bosnia. However much, as Europeans, we may regret it, it was the adherence, involvement and commitment of the United States in IFOR, which was so conspicuously absent in UNPROFOR, that completely changed the perception of the local warring factions towards the international community trying to bring them back from the brink.
I am conscious that time is limited and I will confine myself to just a couple of further topics. As has already been said, our armed forces are unquestionably the finest in the world. But without the proper equipment, even the finest cannot give of their best. No single item of equipment which is due to enter service in the immediate future is more important than the European fighter aircraft. It is not only an important exercise in defence co-operation within Europe, but it is at the heart of the future capability of the Royal Air Force.
We now hear ugly rumours that Germany is minded to wreck co-operation in that area by drastically stretching out the time scale of procurement for EFA in order, we are told, to enable Germany to meet the criteria for joining a single European currency to which Chancellor Kohl has committed himself, despite the fact that it is likely to cause a drastic split within the European unity so painfully built up over the past 40 years.
As was perceptively observed by the late Julian Amery--a former Member for Preston and for Brighton, Pavilion, whose loss we keenly mourn--France seeks to appease Germany in its every move and sits like a mahout atop the ears of the German elephant, vainly and ineffectually seeking to steer the elephant in the direction that France wishes it to go. That is not happening, however, and it is most regrettable that, unlike the British Government, our German allies should not take on board the importance of co-operation in this vital area of European defence. By their actions, they threaten to wreck the fledgling co-operation that has been developed in recent years in that area. I trust that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, as well as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, will bring home to the German Government just how important we regard that particular joint venture.
On more than one occasion in the past, I have been minded to criticise my party's Government for not doing enough on defence. As the election approaches, however, there can be no question but that the greatest threat to the effectiveness and capability of Britain's armed forces comes from new Labour. Its proposal for a comprehensive review of defence may sound reasonable enough to the uninitiated, but every time there is a defence review it is the Treasury that wins and the armed services are forced to beat an undignified retreat. In Labour hands, a defence review can only mean massive defence cuts.
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