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Mr. Blunt: I agree with my right hon. Friend. Having served in both Departments, the one conclusion that I have reached is that the Foreign Office believes that it can spend the MOD's budget much better than the MOD.
Mr. King: My hon. Friend understands my point very well.
I wish to turn to a muddled bit of the Secretary of State's speech. I am not sure whether he was attacking "Options for Change" or saying that it was about right, but that that was where we should now stand. He spoke of it being inert and incoherent; he should be careful.
I warn Ministers to be careful about what they say about "Options for Change". It was masterminded by Lord Vincent, who later became the Chief of Defence Staff and was widely respected. He then went on to become an excellent chairman of the military committee of NATO. "Options for Change" was a two-headed operation. Its second head was the present permanent secretary, who was widely regarded as one of the brightest minds in the Ministry of Defence at the time.
"Options for Change" has effectively stood the test of time; it has not been reversed. The only significant change made to the options programme that I announced was that when the need for peacekeeping in Bosnia came on the horizon my successor, Malcolm Rifkind, took advantage of the provision within the programme which meant that, if necessary, the infantry level could be reviewed. We increased the number of infantry regiments by two battalions, from 38 to 40. Across the breadth of the Navy, the Air Force and the Army, the decisions recommended by Lord Vincent and Richard Mottram and their study groups in "Options for Change", and carried out with due dispatch, have all stood the test of time.
"Options for Change" was never intended to be a slippery slope down which people could slide. It was always intended that we should move from the cold war, when we faced the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact, to a post cold war situation where our military requirements were at a lower plateau--not on a slope, but at a lower plateau.
I accept that there was a case for "Front Line First". We had done much work on what our front-line strength should be, and there was a case for examining the rear echelon, much of the military and MOD estate, and a range of other matters--what might be called the MOD's overheads. But that having been done, I have been saying to my colleagues--and I made it clear to my colleagues when they were in government--that that was the position at which we should stop. One cannot maintain morale in the armed forces of a country or the calibre of personnel required unless one makes it clear that, having made changes, that then is the stability.
The one great disappointment that we all share involves the problem of stretch. My ambition in announcing the reduction in the armed forces was to make it clear that when we moved to a lower level of commitment we would achieve--which we had not achieved before--the 24-month gap between operational tours. For various reasons--Bosnia, the varying requirements of Northern Ireland and recruitment difficulties have quite a lot to do with it--we have not achieved that aim.
There was an acronym in the MOD which I inherited and which many people have forgotten about: MARILYN, as in Marilyn Monroe, which stands for manning and recruitment in the lean years of the nineties. It involves a demographic problem and it was one of the issues that we had to take into account in "Options for Change" when deciding on what we thought would be a sustainable level. MARILYN and the demographic problem of the number of people of recruitment age has meant that it has proved even more difficult than we anticipated in "Options for Change". I hope that we can approach the challenge of enhancing recruitment to the armed forces on a bipartisan basis to ensure that we can return to the 24-month operational tour interval, otherwise there will be difficulties in maintaining morale in the armed forces.
The second challenge that we face is both a constituency and a national issue. It involves procurement problems that flow from lower levels of demand in peacetime, when essential national capabilities cannot be maintained because there is an inadequate level of national procurement.
I have in my constituency a Royal Ordnance factory, which is the only producer of military explosive in this country and on which a significant amount of our
ammunition supplies depend. Other hon. Members have Royal Ordnance factories in their constituencies and know that the issues currently affecting Royal Ordnance are a real problem. Royal Ordnance is a subsidiary of British Aerospace, which is currently embarking on mergers and collaborative arrangements with various companies in different fields. We have just talked about Eurofighter, but in the Royal Ordnance field the company is considering a possible merger with a French company. I accept that, in the defence field, there are often many good or even essential reasons for international collaboration, but this merger involves a possible arrangement whereby certain manufacture will come to this country and certain manufacture will go to France and one of the current proposals might lead to the only source of ammunition explosive being transferred to France.
The first requirement of any defence policy is national security. Forget our international alliances: although they are important and we must play our international role and collaborate with our allies where we can, at the end of the day, it is any Government's responsibility to ensure that we can maintain our essential national security, and ammunition explosive is an absolutely key national requirement. I was Secretary of State when one of our NATO allies refused to supply us with ammunition under the collaborative arrangement that applied within NATO. They were able to claim that it did not apply because the Gulf war was not a NATO matter.
In the case of France, I am conscious that, no matter how many agreements have been signed, the French were not in agreement with us over the Falklands--as we know, Exocet was one of the biggest threats we faced in the Falklands--and nor were they initially in agreement with us over the Gulf war. There was a significant pause before the French Government decided to join in and it is no secret that my then opposite number at the French Ministry of Defence was also the chairman of the Franco-Iraqi friendship society, which slightly compromised his position. Only this week at the United Nations, where we and the United States are pressing for a tightening of sanctions against Iraq in connection with Mr. Ekeus and his efforts to get greater co-operation from the Iraqis, the French have opposed and obstructed our efforts because they are hoping to do a new deal on oil and starting to establish closer trading relationships.
France is our ally and a friend with whom we work closely, but it is impossible to say that we will always have an identity of interest on foreign policy. In addition, it has to be said that even when the Government of France are in favour and showing full co-operation, the capacity of French lorry drivers, farmers or others to make damn sure that supplies do not move down French roads or along French railways is legendary.
I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State is present, because he can speak on behalf of his right hon. and noble Friend the Minister for Defence Procurement, with whom I have been in close contact about these issues. This matter makes both a constituency point and a wider national point: we must ensure that certain capabilities are not lost altogether, even though they are less required at present. During the Gulf war, we found ourselves in a high-intensity conflict in which our Royal Air Force and our artillery fired quantities of ammunition and munitions that were beyond the scale of our previous expectations. We have a duty to our armed forces--to which I pay
tribute as has every other hon. Member who has spoken--to ensure that, if we put them in harm's way, they have the resources they need.
Mr. Mackinlay:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. King:
No--I hope the hon. Gentleman will excuse me.
Mr. Barry Jones (Alyn and Deeside):
I am delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), who gave some of the vital statistics of the Ministry of Defence. He was a distinguished Secretary of State for Defence and a courageous Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. I appreciated the speech made by the hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell), who made a measured set of remarks and, in a low-key delivery, evidenced some considerable attachment to principle.
Listening to the speech of the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young), I was reminded of those days when I was on the squash court with him and, now as then, he was gentlemanly in his proceedings. However, when he attacked spinning, he hit his own wicket, and his remarks about the Welsh Assembly were inexplicable. I shall pick up on his point about the jury being out on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. My right hon. Friend has made an excellent start and I have no doubt whatever that in the months and years ahead he will continue to dominate the important brief that he now holds.
I thank my right hon. Friend for his open and sincere speech, notwithstanding the many interventions that he had to field. I shall support his objectives of efficiency, value for money and flexibility. He made an historic set of remarks when he ran up the flag of equality of opportunity; I support him in that and wish him well. I shall watch with interest how he translates the ideal into practice. What is certain is that, for many years, our nation has been subjected to a huge social revolution, which is on-going and incomplete. We would be foolish to think that the armed forces could be insulated from the effects of that revolution.
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