House of Commons Hansard Debates for 6 Feb 1997 (pt 17)

Mr. McWilliam: As a member of the Defence Select Committee, I know that the problem is not so much the way that the Select Committees were set up but the Armstrong doctrine, which was introduced to hamper Select Committees and which has no basis in any motion passed by the House.

Mr. Colvin: That is a useful conclusion to my remarks on the subject.

On a lighter note, I was intrigued by the throwaway description of Opposition Front Benchers as squirrels by my hon. Friend the Minister of State. I wondered whether they were red squirrels or grey squirrels. As we know, the red squirrel is being driven out by the grey squirrel and that may be what is happening politically. Opposition Members are probably grey squirrels on the outside, but many are still red squirrels on the inside.

Nobody could deny that my hon. Friend the Minister brings a certain style to the Dispatch Box. I congratulate him on the deft and generous way in which he dealt with questions about defence procurement. It would be most uncharacteristic of him to shoot the fox of my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence Procurement and he avoided doing so on this occasion.

I endorse the tributes that have been paid by both sides of the House to the late Sir Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine, whose work hastened the end of the second world war. I recall driving up a road in Kent chased by a V1, which was itself being pursued by a jet fighter and, had it not been for the jet fighter, the doodlebug would

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have got me. The ability of our jet fighters to match and exceed the speed of the V1 was an important factor when it was unleashed on the civilian population by Nazi Germany in the dying gasps of that regime.

Although barely eight months have passed since we debated the Royal Air Force, such debates are important in the run-up to a general election because our deliberations might have some influence on the contents of the parties' manifestos on the key subject of the defence of the realm--the first duty of every Government. I do not mean just the defence of the United Kingdom. This country has interests and investments all over the world. We are a bigger investor in the United States of America than are Japan or Germany and we have influence worldwide. It is important that our defence capabilities have the worldwide reach to which my hon. Friend the Minister referred.

We also have a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations and we were a founder member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. As a background to the debate, it is important to consider the future development of NATO. It could be said to have accomplished its mission--the ending of the cold war. It is undergoing dramatic restructuring and reorganisation. It has 65 headquarters scattered around the world. At the Madrid summit this summer, the important issue of the enlargement of NATO will be discussed.

Since 1989, all NATO member states have cut their armed forces and their defence budgets, both in money terms and as a percentage of gross domestic product. We have had the upheavals of "Options for Change" and "Front Line First" in this country. At the same time, the Ministry of Defence has preserved our ability to mount high-intensity warfare, which is what it is all about.

We cannot win battles without air supremacy. That is why this debate is important. It is logical for the first armed forces debate of the year to be on the Royal Air Force. I endorse what my hon. Friend the Minister said about air supremacy in the Gulf war, in which its importance was displayed.

The collapse of communism and the totalitarian regimes of central and eastern Europe has brought chaos and uncertainty, as well as a certain amount of fear in most of those countries about what will happen in Russia. The Russian people are also frightened about what will happen in the west. They have been indoctrinated for years. They still regard us in the west as the enemy and do not trust us. The central and eastern European countries between the western NATO powers and Russia are in a precarious position.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Baltic states--particularly Estonia and Latvia--and Ukraine, in all of which ethnic Russians amount to almost one third of the population. If any countries are vulnerable, it is they. We have already seen Belarus essentially reincorporated into the federation of Russian states. Most attention will now focus on what happens to Ukraine. I well understand the Russian desire for a special treaty with NATO. I am sure that that will be high on the agenda of the NATO heads of state at the Madrid summit.

There could also be a case for a special treaty of a different nature between NATO and Ukraine. Ukraine must never be seen by the Russians as a buffer between it and the western powers. It must be seen as a bridge between the two. The more we trade with the central and

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eastern European countries, the more trust will be built up, the stronger their economies will become and the better they will be able to defend themselves and reassure their people that the changes resulting from perestroika and glasnost are worth while and not a danger. That is the background for our debate.

A great deal is made of the dangers of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, but I am not convinced that it is such a great threat as people make out. There seems to be a crescent of crisis from Afghanistan to the western Sahara, but Islamic fundamentalism is probably more of a danger to the countries in which those regimes come to power than to their neighbours. Trouble between one country and another can be found, but fundamentalist countries do not seem to have a desire to invade Europe.

There is a danger in the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by such countries. The proliferation of those weapons from the former Soviet Union to the countries along the north African coast is of considerable concern, particularly if they are able to put chemical or biological warheads on them. A Scud missile fired from north Africa could reach the heart of most central European cities. That is one good reason why we must never relinquish our nuclear deterrent, which deters people from taking such pot shots at us.

Mr. Wilkinson: My hon. Friend made a most important point about potential threats and referred to the crescent of crisis in the Islamic world. Is it not therefore particularly important that we pursue our studies into ballistic missile defence in depth, assiduously and with some urgency? A ballistic missile attack on Europe could be launched from that crescent of crisis--Iraq and the littoral and Mahgreb countries--if there were a decisive change to an aggressive form of dictatorship in any of those countries.

Mr. Colvin: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Select Committee has addressed that issue and made recommendations. The question is whether the European countries do the development work on anti-ballistic missile defence systems themselves or in concert with our American allies. I believe that transatlantic co-operation on this is a must because of the enormous costs and it is a good way to continue the development of the two-way street in the exchange of technology and manufacture between us and our most important allies, the United States of America.

Another factor to bear in mind in the current overall security situation is the re-election of an American president for a second term. Whatever one may think about President Clinton's politics, the fact is that American presidents in their second term become much more internationalist. They are less concerned with the domestic situation and re-election, because they cannot be elected for a third term. An American president in his second term goes all out to leave behind a record in the history books as an international statesman who did his bit to improve the condition of people worldwide.

President Clinton has already established the Partnership for Peace--a well-conceived proposal that gives countries that want to join NATO an opportunity to get a toe in the door. It has worked effectively and we

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must pay credit to President Clinton for it. Over the next few years, the United States of America will become more internationalist in outlook and its president will take a more active role in international affairs.

Although the NATO countries will be debating enlargement this year, the enlargement of the European Union is equally important from a security point of view, not because we need a common policy on security, defence or foreign affairs, but simply because, the faster we enlarge, the less danger there is of European institutions becoming too deep--something that we do not want. Enlargement will also allow the economies of central and eastern European countries to develop faster, enabling them to defend themselves as they want.

In 1975, when we were debating the Common Market during the referendum campaign, I recall being told by a history master in a secondary school in Andover that the entire future of the Common Market boiled down to one point. He said, "When you trade, you have peace and when trade breaks down, you have war." That is why the speed with which we need to reform the common agricultural policy is so important. We cannot enlarge the European Union to the east until we have reformed the CAP. The faster that is done the better, because there is an important security component to the enlargement of the European Union. It is against that background that we debate the RAF today.

The report by the Select Committee on Defence on last summer's statement on the defence estimates contained the latest results of the Committee's inquiry into front-line forces. I shall outline the main points that we made in respect of the RAF.

In paragraph 43, we concluded that, last July, the RAF was just about meeting its commitments while going through a considerable period of change and that the "Options for Change" drawdown would cease to be an adequate explanation for uncertainty in the RAF after April 1997. We looked forward to the resumption of tests of operational effectiveness after 1 April 1997. We hoped that after that, the RAF would be able to benefit from a greater measure of stability before the introduction of the Eurofighter in 2001--it will now be 2002--and the withdrawal from Germany in 2002 brought new elements of change. That is now happening.

Perhaps my hon. Friend can tell us when he replies to the debate whether the RAF will resume the TACEVAL--or tactical evaluation--tests of operational effectiveness in March. Moreover, with redundancies being completed by April, there should now be signs of stability and improved morale in the RAF.

In paragraph 51, we concluded that the fact that RAF aircraft were being used for operations was no excuse for the low rates of serviceability--that is what they are for. We said that the fact that average serviceability rates have declined must mean that the higher rates of serviceability for aircraft on operational deployment must be matched by significantly lower rates for aircraft based in Germany and the United Kingdom. We accepted that recent problems with the Tornado engines had affected serviceability, but we concluded that they did not account for the long-term decline. We thought that the experience should be recalled if the RAF ever again considered saving money by cutting spares or further reductions in uniformed manpower. We were also concerned about the number of aircraft losses in 1996--a subject that has been mentioned today.

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The House will expect an assurance from my hon. Friend that fast jet serviceability has now improved after the problems with spares and the RB199 engine. I hope that the lesson has been learnt about the effect of cutting spending on spares.