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Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North): Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Campbell: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I shall develop the points that I want to make on nuclear matters and then, if he is still interested, I shall be happy to give way to him.
The Moscow criterion is wholly inconsistent with NATO's doctrine of minimum deterrence. The UK should make an annual declaration of the total size of its operational nuclear arsenal. No prejudice would result as a consequence of that. The United States and Russia have to do it as part of the strategic arms reduction treaty and it would help to promote transparency and assist in confidence building. The UK should promote an initiative whereby, so long as Russia and the United States continue to reduce stockpiles, Britain, France and China would bind themselves not to increase the size of their nuclear arsenals.
The UK should seek the establishment of a five-power nuclear forum before the non-proliferation treaty review conference in 2000, not only to improve safety but to strengthen security. We should also back an international nuclear weapons register as a means of increasing transparency.
All those things would operate in an effective and coherent way in continuing to reduce the extent to which nuclear weapons form part of the defence architecture of the UK and of others, and they could all be effected without any prejudice to the deterrent's independence or to its effectiveness in the purpose for which it has been conceived.
The fourth Trident submarine should not be cancelled. The financial savings from doing so would be relatively limited. Indeed, one could argue that a three-boat fleet would increase the risk of having to make an early decision on force replacement. The extension of the lifetime of the existing Trident system, so that consideration of a replacement can be postponed, is an entirely laudable objective. We should consider integrating patrol and refit schedules with those of the French and look with an open mind at the readiness of the nuclear deterrent.
I do not believe in formal declarations such as "no first use". It would be much better to emphasise NATO's doctrine of minimum deterrence and that these are weapons of last resort. In that respect, the declaration by the United States that it has no plans to deploy nuclear weapons in new NATO member countries is clearly helpful.
Mr. Corbyn:
I have listened carefully to what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said about nuclear weapons.
Mr. Campbell:
I do not have my finger on that button and the hon. Gentleman will no doubt address his question to the Secretary of State for Defence, but he misunderstands the concept of deterrence. The point about deterrence is not whether one would press the button; it is whether a potential adversary is uncertain about whether that is the case. That is not my definition. I first heard it when Lord Younger of Prestwick, as he now is, was Secretary of State for Defence. The essence of deterrence is uncertainty in the mind of a potential adversary.
During the Gulf war--the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) will remember this better than most of us--there was a certain threat that Saddam Hussein might use weapons of mass destruction. The advice given back through the appropriate diplomatic channels was that if there was any effort to use weapons of mass destruction, the response--the word was chosen with some care--would be "disproportionate". Most people understood what the shorthand meant. A feature of the Gulf war was that Saddam Hussein--as we now know from the activities of Mr. Rolf Ekeus and others on the UN Special Commission on Iraq--had substantial capacity to use weapons of mass destruction, but never did so.
People often say to those of us who support nuclear deterrence, "Can you give us an instance where it has worked?" We can never prove this to a mathematical certainty, but I am willing to accept that the threat of a disproportionate response had a great deal to do with Saddam Hussein's reluctance to use weapons of mass destruction. Those are the sort of circumstances in which deterrence is likely to be effective. Of course, if someone presses the button he has failed because the weapon has failed to carry out its purpose--to act as a deterrent--but until there are far fewer nuclear weapons I am not disposed to give up the UK nuclear deterrent.
Eurofighter is one of the constants in the defence review. Notwithstanding articles in The Guardian, which has somehow become a popular newspaper of reference in the House, I remain convinced of Eurofighter's military, economic and technological advantages. For the moment, I want to concentrate on the military requirements.
The UK requires an agile jet fighter. The Tornado F3 Interceptor, as its name suggests, was designed to intercept Soviet aircraft across the North sea. It is not an agile fighter in the term in which that is understood. Indeed, its limitations were shown in the Gulf war, when the scope of operations on which it could be sent was substantially limited.
Eurofighter was designed against the SU27, a Soviet, now Russian, aircraft, which, with its derivatives, is freely available. It is sold not quite at knock-down prices, but at economic and encouraging rates. There is every chance that, on some future occasion, Royal Air Force pilots carrying out operations on behalf either of the UK or, perhaps more likely, of the UN or NATO, might find themselves flying against aircraft of the capability of the SU27. It is right that we should provide those pilots with the best possible equipment in the form of an aircraft that is capable of dealing with that threat.
No European option is as capable. Neither the French Rafale nor the Grippen has the capability. Of course, there are American choices; we flirted with some of them when Mr. Michael Portillo had stewardship of the MOD. It sounded rather paradoxical. We were going to hire second-hand F16s while leasing out F3s to the Italians, whose need for Eurofighter is probably greater than anyone else's.
The Americans supply countries with an aircraft at very low initial cost, but then they get their pound of flesh by the substantial through-life costs that necessarily attach to it. An F16 procurement would signal the end of that particular technical capability in the UK. Nor is there any guarantee that we would receive the top-of-the-range model. When the Saudi Arabians bought the F15E from the United States, because of the United States' political sympathy for Israel, they were given not the top-of-the-range model, but something called the F15XS, an F15E minus. Pakistan wanted to purchase 16 F16s, but that sale was blocked by Congress for political reasons. It would not be right for us to embark on a programme that allowed us to be so dependent on opinion in Congress which, if I may put the matter delicately, is not always entirely sympathetic to our foreign policy objectives.
Eurofighter is important for the future of the European defence industrial base, but we are entitled--here I pay tribute to what the Secretary of State for Defence said about the need for effective use of resources--to demand cost-effective procurement. The National Audit Office report on defence procurement, which showed that only five out of 25 products met the in-service target dates, that overspending on some projects was as high as 10 per cent. and that the procurement budget was overspending by about £1.3 billion, made shocking reading.
We are entitled to expect that, when substantial sums of that order are invested in procurement, we obtain value for money. We have to remind ourselves only that the C130J is now 16 months late and that the Challenger 2 main battle tank is not yet universally in service. Those were important procurement decisions. It is unacceptable that the aircraft and the main battle tank are not yet in service. The NAO report went so far as to say that procurement was so far behind schedule that Britain's defences were being put at risk and that outdated ships, tanks and aircraft were being patched up at a cost of £400 million.
I should like to refer to three personnel issues. There is and there can be no place for racism in the armed forces of the United Kingdom. It is often associated with bullying and occurs because of prejudice. I cannot resist the conclusion that it flourishes where non-commissioned officers and other officers either ignore it or are not alive to the fact of its taking place. I believe that the culture of the armed services should be such that responsibility for racism is part of the chain of command.
The Government know my view about homosexuality--I believe it to be an issue of fundamental human rights. Virtually every other NATO country does not need a policy of the kind that we have. It was a highly controversial issue in the presidential campaign when Bill Clinton was first elected, but even there a compromise was reached. I predict that the Government will be
compelled by operation of law to change their policy. It would be far, far better to do it now with grace and without compulsion.
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