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Prevention of Delay in Trials
Miss Anne McIntosh accordingly presented a Bill to provide that a person indicted for a serious criminal offence shall be brought to trial within a period of not more than 110 days; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 28 November, and to be printed [Bill 65].
Defence Policy
Madam Speaker:
I inform the House that, because of the great number of right hon. and hon. Members seeking to take part in the debate, I must restrict Back-Bench speeches to 10 minutes.
[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.]
4.26 pm
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Dr. John Reid): I approach this speech with a mixture of pride and humility: pride not in myself, but in the accomplishments, professionalism and sheer dedication of the British armed forces, which I have been temporarily asked to represent in this Chamber; and a sense of humility when confronted with both the admiration that they enjoy world wide and the daunting nature of the tasks that lie ahead.
At the same time, I am clear that those of us who have the privilege of being appointed to the Ministry of Defence realise that it brings with it no mundane or simple challenge, for this Department is charged with providing the fighting power to discharge one of the primary tasks of Government--the protection of our fellow citizens, our country, our freedoms, our dependent territories and our wider interests in the world.
Under this Government, the Department is charged with a second task, for, as the Prime Minister has made clear, the Government believe in taking an active part in international affairs. We accept that just as the citizen at home has responsibilities as well as rights, so, too, in the international arena we as a nation have an obligation to contribute towards making the world a better, safer and more secure place. This is not just because of our international standing in the UN, NATO, the European Union and the Commonwealth--though that would surely be enough in itself--and not just because of the self-evident self-interest of a more secure world, but because if there is to be an ethical dimension to our foreign policy, it will surely require positive action in resisting aggression, protecting civilians, seeking to prevent genocide, terrorism and enforced starvation, assisting evacuees and tackling the world wide scourge of the drugs trade. That will encompass peacekeeping and peacemaking, and the many other tasks in which our armed forces are a primary or important instrument of action.
Those tasks would be challenging enough in normal times. However, we live not in normal times but in an epoch of rapid, profound international change. A mere decade ago, the cold war presented grave dangers, but the two great glaciers held in check in their hinterland a multitude of potential problems, frozen in relative stability.
A torrent of new risks has been unleashed, in the form of border disputes, ethnic enmities, civil wars, arms proliferation, mass illegal migrations and international
criminal opportunities. The relative simplicity of the old threat has gone, and with it, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the comfortable certainties that marked yesterday's security strategy.
I was struck last night by the large number of hon. Members--some long standing and distinguished, and others relatively new--who wanted to speak in this first defence debate of the new Parliament; it is a reflection of the abiding interest of the House in the defence of our country.
I regret that I was unable to deal with all the myriad points made by hon. Members. I will, however, touch on the substantial points raised by the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King), a distinguished former Secretary of State for Defence, whom shortage of time, rather than discourtesy, prevented me from answering.
Our strategic defence review--which, I reiterate, is policy led, rather than resource driven--will ensure that we have clarity in our objectives and coherence in our planning as we move into the 2lst century. Resources obviously matter and, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said yesterday, we are determined, as part of the review, to undertake a ruthless search for greater efficiency in defence spending within the present budget, to create the space to redeploy towards perceived inadequacies and any newly identified roles, capabilities, missions and tasks. We want not only to deliver valuefor money but to ensure that Britain has flexible, high-capability forces, able to meet tomorrow's challenges.
As far as possible, we want to build consensus. That does not mean quiescence, or a lack of criticism or vigour in debate. There will be disagreements--we, like all other Governments, will make mistakes and we fully accept that it is the duty of the Opposition to point them out, preferably before they are made--but we believe that the grounds exist, as the hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said last night, for all of us to work together to build a framework for the future, putting national security and the national interest above party politics.
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate):
Those are fine words, but where is the foreign policy base line for us to discuss? It would be easy to achieve consensus if there were a Green or White Paper on the foreign policy base line for the strategic defence review, but, as there is not, we have to conclude that the base line will appear in a final document after the Treasury axe has fallen, and it will be a reverse justification.
Dr. Reid:
That relates to another point made last night by the hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife. This debate will contribute to the formulation of ideas, so we would not want to prejudge it. More importantly, I commend to the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence to the Royal United Services Institute and the English Speaking Union and his articles in a number of publications. The hon. Gentleman will find in them a range of assumptions which address high-intensity and low-intensity warfare, peacekeeping, geographical dispersion of threats, risks, capabilities, sustainability, and concurrency of operations. There is no shortage of views put out by my right hon. Friend to inform the debate.
I listened with interest to the hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife last night because almost every issue that he mentioned has a resonance with the issues raised by my right hon. Friend, with the exception of the merging of the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, which I believe has not been done anywhere else in the world.
Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife):
It seems to command some support among former Foreign Secretaries. On the substantive point, there are issues about, for example, the extent to which the United Kingdom's defence should be integrated with Europe or whether the primacy of NATO should be maintained in all circumstances. Those are political judgments. The Minister knows my view. I believe that there should be much more integration of British and European defence. So far, we are not sure what the Government's view is.
Dr. Reid:
In that case, I commend to the hon. and learned Gentleman that elementary document, the Labour party manifesto, which was endorsed by 95 per cent. of Labour party members and, overwhelmingly, by the people. NATO is the cornerstone of our defence. Yes, we wish to develop the European security and defence identity, but within the framework of NATO. That is not a matter for discussion in the defence review. The other matter that was written into our manifesto was the retention of the minimum deterrent through Trident. We have made our views plain on that issue, as on all the other issues that have been mentioned.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold):
May I press the Minister a little further on the foreign policy base line? May we assume that in the strategic defence review, the three primary roles of the armed forces--the defence of the realm and its dependent territories, defence against an external aggressor, and full ability to take part in recognised international defensive and offensive forums such as NATO--will be fully maintained and that our ability in those respects will not be significantly reduced?
Dr. Reid:
The hon. Gentleman may take it that those three roles are encompassed by the aims of the review, but if it was as simple as wrapping the matter up in those three roles despite the changing world and our changing commitments, we would not need a defence review or debate; we would merely write down the roles. We are not going to abandon the defence of Britain. We are committed to NATO and to common protection and security. I have already made it plain that we are committed to the defence of our dependent territories and, of course, to discharging our international obligations to the world. I say yes to the three roles, but the matter is slightly more complex, as the hon. Gentleman knows.
If we are to make a rigorous analysis, we must begin by analysing the base from which we start. I believe that we do not start from a very firm base in all areas. Thinking back to the discussion last night, it is not only that defence expenditure has been cut by 29 per cent. since the mid-1980s or that personnel numbers have been
cut by 32 per cent. or that tanks, frigates, destroyers and the surface fleet have been cut. It is that we believe that the manner in which those cuts were made was too arbitrary.
The arbitrary nature of the reductions and the apparent lack of coherence has left us with a sorry legacy--an inheritance which is now manifesting itself in a number of inadequacies. I want to mention only three as examples. This need not be a point of party political contention. I do not suggest that the previous Government intentionally designed the inadequacies, but, before we start to deploy resources, we have to backfill the inadequacies to meet our most basic tasks. The first is the inadequacy of strategy. Clear direction must be given so that everyone involved, including service men and women, who ultimately have to bear the task that we place on their shoulders, knows the direction in which we are moving.
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