| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury): Before the hon. Gentleman, who is my Chairman on the Defence Select Committee, moves on from the sale of married quarters estate, does he agree that the future level of rent rises for armed forces married quarters is an important piece of unfinished business, especially in the light of the strain on families that has been emphasised by hon. Members of all parties?
Mr. George: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's intervention, as he was one of the few hon. Members who had the courage to abstain on the matter in the previous Parliament, after a great deal of pressure was exerted on him by the Whips. I hope that our Committee will follow the request of the previous Committee and revisit the issue, although it must be obvious to everyone that the die has been cast and the sale completed.
I also hope that we will return to the question of the Ministry of Defence police and security. Security cannot be compromised, and I hope that no more bits of Trident, or anything else, will go missing. Fraud in the MOD continues to be investigated, and if we continue to lose parts of Trident, as we apparently have in the past few years, supporters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will be able to claim that Britain has indeed denuclearised.
The Committee will return to the issue of heavy lift--I am profoundly disappointed that Lockheed Martin has failed as yet to deliver the C130J--and I hope that we will consider merchant shipping, most of which has disappeared in the past 15 years. I trust that we shall
continue to investigate Gulf war syndrome--if that is the correct phrase--and I welcome the positive and supportive view taken by my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces; I compliment him, and I hope that he will soon repeat his visit of a few months ago to the Committee, because we are committed to monitoring continuously what is being done in the MOD to further research something that I believe was detrimental to our armed forces.
Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport):
The hon. Gentleman, the Chairman of my former Committee, will remember that towards the end of the previous Parliament I spoke in the Committee about the difference between the Ministry of Defence's attitude towards serving soldiers, sailors and airmen and its attitude towards those who had retired. The latter often find it difficult to get justice for an injury sustained as a result of service. Will the Committee consider that matter?
Mr. George:
I very much regret the hon. Gentleman's disappearance from our number, and I recall vividly that he persuaded the previous Committee to pursue the subject of the way in which the Ministry of Defence compensates those who have suffered as a result of service on behalf of the Crown.
We are still in the process of considering compensating the soldiers who suffered cancer as a result of the atomic tests of the 1950s. I would not encourage anyone to believe that the MOD moves at more than glacial speed. Nevertheless, the issue must be taken up, and I shall put it to the Committee when we have completed our strategic defence review inquiry, which will dominate our activities over the next few months.
I have a few more points on issues that the Defence Committee took up but on which it was not satisfied with the answers received. On the new defence college, I regret that the Greenwich Royal Naval college will no longer be put to the purpose for which it was devised. I suggested that that building or the new millennium park could serve as an exhibition of MOD, War Office or Admiralty foul-ups over the past 200 or 300 years, but I was advised that there was not enough room. I had a number of ideas about what could be included. Certainly the period 1979 to 1997 would have required a great deal of space.
The whole concept of the future defence college has been most maladroitly pursued over the past two or three years. I very much regret the fate of Greenwich Royal Naval college. Perhaps it is not entirely too late to reappraise.
The Defence Committee will visit Bosnia shortly. We have the second largest force there, and it is almost patronising to repeat how wonderful it is. I hope that the United States will not abandon its commitment to Bosnia or scale down its forces to a level that would render its contribution less than a critical mass. As was said in the press today, the US cannot deploy only its naval and air forces and withdraw its land forces; their presence is critical. I hope that the US Congress will see how very important is the continuing presence in large numbers of US armed forces.
In a few days, the hon. Member for Romsey and the hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) will join me on a visit to Bonn, where we shall discuss with our colleagues on the Defence
Committee in Germany the future of the Eurofighter. I hope that Germany will remain in the programme. Germany's Government want it, our Government want it, and I hope that the German Parliament will accept that it is necessary.
I am sad that Vickers is getting out of car production. The next time that it appears before the Defence Committee and plays the Union Jack card, I shall politely remind it that, having sustained its production of tanks, and not yet having seen the product of the vast investment that the country has put into keeping an indigenous tank capability, Sir Colin Chandler and his colleagues should have considered more seriously the need to retain Rolls-Royce, which is surely the flagship of Britain's industry. Perhaps Sir Colin will soon visit the Defence Committee to explain how successful his company has been in producing the Challenger tank.
Lastly, I welcome the new defence teams to the first of many head-banging sessions. I hope that the House will be able to reach a degree of consensus. We require competent armed forces and competent doctrine. Competent forces can be provided only by adequate resources. As a legislature, it is our task not only to consider the threat now, next week or next month; the decisions of the strategic defence review will have to last for the next quarter of a century. That requires a far-sightedness for which neither Treasuries nor legislatures are well equipped.
Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater):
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who has been a distinguished and active member of Defence Select Committees over many years. I congratulate him on his promotion to the chairmanship of the Committee. Without in any way wishing offence, I must say that the Secretary of State would have learned a lot more if he had stayed because the hon. Gentleman knows much more about defence than the Secretary of State has yet been able to learn.
The Secretary of State is a good and agile debater but the jury is obviously still out on whether he will be any good as Secretary of State. One of his colleagues shopped him before he even started. I hung on to a quotation in The Independent from a shadow Minister in January--I apologise for the language--who said:
I said that the jury must still be out on whether the Secretary of State will be any good in the most difficult job in a Labour Government. The Chairman of the
Defence Committee spelt out that we have reached bedrock. In launching the defence review, the Secretary of State said that no one would seriously expect defence to get any more money. That was not the best foot to put forward with the Treasury in starting a review. It would have pocketed the quotation and realised that it was downwards only from then on.
This is our first debate on defence under the new Government. I appreciate that the Secretary of State has written to me to ask whether I would be prepared to talk to him about defence policy. I will do so. That is a constructive approach. On the defence of our country, we will certainly stand up for what we believe is right and, as a party, defend the policies that we have stood for in the past. We are proud of what we have done on defence. However, we all care about our country and defence is one of the areas where the US approach of being more bipartisan on defence and overseas matters is appropriate. We have managed to encourage the Labour party to a much more constructive defence policy than that which it adopted in the past. Its beliefs are going in the right direction; the challenge is whether it will be able to carry those beliefs through with the necessary resources.
I am afraid that in marking the card so far, it has been a difficult start for the Secretary of State. Under no circumstances should the position of Secretary of State for Defence be a consolation prize for not being Secretary of State for Scotland. Lord Younger of Prestwick has been mentioned. On more than adequately discharging his duties as Secretary of State for Scotland, he was promoted to Secretary of State for Defence. That is the relative order of importance of the two roles.
In not expecting more money and in his approach to the review, anyone who considers the problems of stretch faced by our armed forces must recognise that defence may require more funds if demands on and expectations of our armed forces grow. I heard what the Secretary of State had to say about the fine, but I noted the speed with which it was conceded and announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young) made the telling point that it was the Chancellor who announced the decision about the royal yacht. I have a nasty feeling that the Chancellor or the Chief Secretary will announce more defence decisions, leaving us faced with a fait accompli.
The Secretary of State's assumption that a fine was involved and money was automatically going to be taken from his budget is an entirely new concept. I do not know who gave him that idea--I am sorry that I could not have an earlier consultation with him as I might have stiffened his back on that issue.
We are having the first defence debate of this Labour Government and it is no secret--everyone in the House knows it--that the country and the armed forces are suspicious of the Labour party on defence matters. It is no good thinking that if the manifesto states that the party believes in a strong defence that will meet all the fears and anxieties of those who serve in our armed forces. They are waiting to see what is actually done.
One of the Labour Government's first deeds involved the Chancellor saying that the Government would put more money into the health service this winter and that that money would come out of the defence budget. Anyone who knows the armed forces or who has talked to service men will realise that that act immediately
reinforced their fear that it would turn out to be the start of a process. The announcement has been very damaging to morale.
Nobody in the armed forces or the Ministry of Defence is encouraged by the theory that the review will not be Treasury led. Being foreign policy led is not necessarily a great credential either. Let us imagine what would have happened if we had had a foreign policy-led review in earlier years. The Foreign Office did not foresee the Falklands or the Gulf wars. It never said, "Some 10 per cent. of our armed forces will have to be committed to peacekeeping in Bosnia in five years' time." The Foreign Office did not foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union or the iron curtain with anything like the speed at which they happened.
"Look, none of us has the first sodding idea about what government means, whether any of us will be any good at it, or even what being good at it means.
On today of all days, it is quite clear that some still carry on the practice.
In many respects the skills required in opposition are diametrically opposite to the skills needed in government. Some of my colleagues have made a career out of being a conduit for leaks from the civil service to the press. That's hardly going to be much good in government."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |