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Madam Speaker: In the first place, it is not the procedure of this House that any hon. Member who has made an application to me under Standing Order No. 24
should raise it on the Floor of the House. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is an experienced Member and former Minister, and I would have expected him to understand the procedures of the House.
Secondly, it is not incumbent upon the right hon. and learned Gentleman to repeat a conversation that took place between my office and him. My office tries to assist hon. Members, and I deprecate the repetition of such conversations on the Floor of the House.
I have no wish to embarrass the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I have to tell him that his Standing Order No. 24 application did not even reach first base. If he considers that an issue of parliamentary privilege or contempt has arisen, he should write to me, and I will then consider the matter. Apart from that, I see nothing in what he is saying that should properly engage the Speaker of this House.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby):
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. It relates to the freedom of Members of this House, and I should be grateful for your ruling.
When my party was in government, I noted that hon. Members from both sides of the House went around planting oral questions--a practice you and I both deprecate. You can therefore imagine my surprise when, this afternoon in the Table Office, I was given a question by the Member who I believe to be the parliamentary private secretary to the Minister without Portfolio, who asked me to raise this planted question with that very Minister. Will you rule that asking Opposition or Government Members to raise planted questions is quite improper?
Madam Speaker:
I would have looked forward enormously not just to the question but to the hon. Gentleman's supplementary, because that is when the knife goes in. I am sure that Ministers will have learnt their lesson.
Relevant documents: Minutes of Evidence taken before the Defence Committee on 29th July (Gulf War Illnesses), HC 222-i, and 30th July (Strategic Defence Review), HC 138-i, and the First Special Report from the Defence Committee (Government Replies to First to Sixth Reports of Session 1996-97: HC 94 (Sale of the Married Quarters Estate), HC 211 (The Army Terms of Service (Amendment) Regulations (S.I., 1996 No. 2973)), HC 142 (Defence Medical Services), HC 127 (Defence Spending), HC 233 (Heavy Lift) and HC 158 (Gulf War Illnesses: Latest Developments)), HC 153.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Robert Ainsworth.]
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. George Robertson):
It is a great honour to address the House in my first defence debate as Secretary of State for Defence.
Our armed forces and the civil servants and other civilians who support them are a great credit to our country. Wherever they are called upon to serve in the world, from the Falklands to Bosnia, from Iraq to Northern Ireland--and many other places, too--they earn the respect of those whom they are called upon to defend. They perform a difficult and often dangerous task with great distinction, and it is my privilege to pay tribute to them today.
Those brave men and women are now participating in our strategic defence review, which is the central part of the Government's defence policy. When I launched the review at the end of May, I said that I wanted it to be open and inclusive, unlike the secretive and often partial reviews of the recent past.
I firmly believe that there is a consensus on defence in the British nation, and I want the review to reflect it. The British people are tired of petty squabbling by politicians over important national matters where little real division exists. My confidence that such a consensus exists has led me to embark on an unprecedented amount of consultation in this review. I am sure that it will be possible to establish a wide base of support for the conclusions that the review will eventually reach.
The consultation process has a number of strands. First and most important, we are holding this two-day debate in the House so that hon. Members can give their views on the priorities that Britain should set for its security policy and armed forces. My Ministers and I will listen with great care to what is said during the debate. Secondly, in the run-up to the debate, the Foreign Secretary and I held two open seminars attended by the principal Opposition spokespeople and others, and I shall hold a third seminar shortly. Thirdly, I invited anyone with an interest to submit his or her views in writing, and so far we have received more than 450 contributions. Of those, some 370 authors have given permission for their contributions to be placed in the Libraries of both Houses, where they are now available for reference. Another consultation with a panel of individuals, both expert and non-expert in defence matters, and with the armed forces, is also in hand.
In addition to what I say today, I outlined the Government's thinking in recent speeches that I made to the English Speaking Union and the Royal United Services Institute, and those will be available in the Libraries of the House.
All that is in stark contrast to the methods used by Governments in the recent past. This review is different: we are consulting, so let no one say that they have not had a chance to express their view in this open review process. We have listened to many people in the past five and a half months, and I shall now outline some of the Government's views on our security priorities.
We believe that the British are by inclination internationalist, not isolationist. When the British people voted new Labour on 1 May, they did so in part because they trusted us to represent them in the great councils of the world. The British people also trusted new Labour because they believed that we would protect and improve the tools that underpin Britain's place in the world, particularly our armed forces, which are held in such high regard abroad. We will not betray the trust of the British people.
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath):
In that case, why did not the video of new Britain shown to Commonwealth leaders at the Edinburgh summit mention Her Majesty's forces?
Mr. Robertson:
If the hon. Gentleman is as obsessed as some of his colleagues seem to be with those videos, he will realise that the Commonwealth is not an institution with a defence dimension. Perhaps he suggests that it should have one. The Government's commitment to our armed forces and the job that they do is beyond question.
Just as we are determined to play a positive and active role within the European Union, so we shall play a leading role in NATO and the United Nations. The transatlantic link remains vital to our defence and our country, so we can and will be involved in the world. We shall not stand aside from the new threats and problems that face the international community because that is not our way. We intend to be persuaders for our values and points of view. Britain will continue to be a force for good in the world.
Such a role, however, carries obligations. If we are to discharge them properly, we must have well-equipped, modern, capable armed forces, able to counter the problems that we are likely to encounter in the 21st century. The Opposition patently missed that vital point in all their long years in government.
The world has changed fundamentally in the past 10 years. The fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Warsaw pact removed the monolithic threat facing the peoples of Europe. The end of that terrible confrontation is greatly to be welcomed, but it has left problems in its wake. Other tensions, sometimes long submerged, have been able to surface now that the super-power confrontation has been dissolved.
I remember calling that new and complex picture a "bonfire of the certainties". The world is now a much more complex and confusing place. However, some people continue to say, "Who is the enemy now that the Warsaw pact has gone?" I have a clear answer for them: the enemy is the instability that can threaten the peace and prosperity that we now enjoy. Only last week, we saw an influx of migrants, of refugees to this country from Slovakia, which created a great stir in Britain. Just imagine the population migrations that could result if the economies of central and eastern Europe failed in their brave reform programmes.
Ethnic disputes, such as that in the former Yugoslavia, and territorial ambitions such as those displayed by Saddam Hussein, have caused major conflicts in the
1990s. Other problems exist as well. Religious tensions, the competition for scarce resources, including water, and the new security challenges posed by the drugs trade, organised crime and terrorism must all be dealt with.
The previous Government sadly failed to recognise that agenda. The armed forces inherited by this Government are doing difficult jobs extremely well in very demanding circumstances, but they were subjected to a series of savage and arbitrary cuts, which shocked the British people as they became widely known.
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire):
If those essential commitments demand extra spending, will the Government provide it? If not, how can this be called a review? Is not it just a cost-cutting exercise?
Mr. Robertson:
The hon. Gentleman asks whether we shall increase spending, then implies, by answering his own question, that we shall cut expenditure. There are demanding commitments and holes in capabilities, which I shall outline. We shall have to rethink priorities inside the Ministry of Defence. I do not think that the Conservative party suggests that we increase defence expenditure--it would be bizarre if it did, given that it cut £9 billion from the defence budget in the past nine years. The hon. Gentleman would be wise not to go on about expenditure cuts but to stay silent and listen to the catalogue that we were left to deal with and the problems that we must face.
5.7 pm
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