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6.45 pm
Mr. Martin Bell (Tatton): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, and I wish to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Crawley
(Laura Moffatt) on an excellent maiden speech. She clearly had a much easier time than I did in framing the appropriate compliments to her predecessor.
Am I alone, because I do not represent a party, in believing that we should not play party politics with the defence of the realm? I made it my objective when I became, almost by accident, a Member of Parliament to make only short speeches on subjects that I knew something about. I had the privilege of serving in uniform with the 7th Armoured Division in the Gulf and, out of uniform, alongside British troops in Bosnia. I know from both experiences that we have the best little Army in the world. I know, too, that unless it changes at least as fast as circumstances are changing, it will no longer be the best little Army in the world. We have to go back to first principles and renew them. I shall make some brief suggestions.
I have argued in my previous life, as well as this one, that any defence review must take as a starting point the welfare of service families. That issue is not ancillary to the enterpriseit is central. It is good to know that the Secretary of State has heard about overstretch directly from service men in Split. I can add more. I know of units that were sent on almost back-to-back, six-month unaccompanied tours in Bosnia. It was not uncommon for a battalion's casualties to include not only the dead and wounded--and there were such casualties, because the soldiers risked their lives to save lives--but 10 per cent. and more of its marriages. Soldiers would return to find that they no longer had a functioning home. They had gained a medal and lost a marriage. What kind of a deal is that?
Let us match commitments to resources and resources to commitments in the defence review. We should change our attitudes to operations and active service, which tend to be thought of as a cycle. Troops train for the operation, carry out the operation--whether fighting a war, or peacekeeping and enforcement--and the cycle resumes. In fact, the process is a continuum, involving pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict.
We should not forget the lessons that have been learned in Bosnia and Rwanda about pre-emptive deployment. A pre-emptive UN deployment prevented war in Macedonia and, in my judgment, saved thousands of lives. Kofi Annan believes that a pre-emptive deployment of one armoured brigade in Rwanda at the beginning of the emergency would have held off genocide and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. One does not have to be a super-power to field an armoured brigade.
We must welcome the Government's initiative on mine clearance. A war does not end with a ceasefire or a peace agreement, and mines will blow up for generations and kill and wound children yet unborn. I can think of no better use of our taxpayers' money than that our soldiers should continue to train children in many countries in the identification of mines.
Finally, I wish to refer to rank and privilege--not the functions of rank, but its privilege--and the gap that exists, certainly in the Army, between officers and other ranks. We are privileged to have listening to this debate my friend Major Eric Joyce, a soldier of distinction who has risked his career and now faces--
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order to refer to Strangers during a debate in the House?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
It is not strictly in order, and I advise the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) not to do so.
Mr. Bell:
I stand corrected. Major Joyce faces a court martial or an administrative dismissal, or he may have to resign. I hope that Ministers will make a distinction between the disciplinary action being taken and the merit of his ideas. Here is just one--that a sergeant should find a fast-track promotional route into the Royal Military academy at Sandhurst which, at the moment, he cannot do four years after signing up. That route is closed. The proportion of soldiers who are now officer cadets at Sandhurst is 0.2 per cent. For me, that is an indictment of the rigidity of the present system and we must surely change it.
Mr. John McWilliam (Blaydon):
It is a significant privilege to follow the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell) and, for the first time in 20 years in this House, I can say that I do not disagree with a word that an hon. Member sitting opposite me has said.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) on an excellent maiden speech, and I look forward to working closely with her on the Defence Committee. In particular, her medical expertise will be of great benefit to the Committee as we study Gulf war syndrome. I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate also the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who is on the Opposition Front Bench. I hope that he continues to do so for a long time, and I shall miss his company on the Select Committee, at both the evidence sessions and our informal evenings when we are away. I should add to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley that on many occasions--although not today--the most colourful thing about her predecessor was his socks.
I wish to say a few words about our armed forces. I have served on the Select Committee and as a defence Whip, and I have been associated with the armed forces since I was chairman of the Edinburgh military tattoo policy committee. I have seen our armed forces in the Gulf, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Turkey and northern Iraq. I am utterly at a loss to explain how they can continue to display such professionalism and commitment, to be so effective and to show such compassion and humanity under the difficult circumstances in which they find themselves, given the pressures to which they have been subjected in the past 15 years.
If I had suggested when I was first elected to the House that we cut our armed forces by a half of what the previous Government did, I would have been subjected to the most terrible ridicule. The previous Government cut our armed
forces by more than was called for by the most lunatic resolution passed by conference in the old days of the Labour party--and, believe me, there were some lunatic ones.
I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) has just left the Chamber. I respect his pacifism, but I stood for election on the Labour party manifesto. We all stood for election on that manifesto, but it was not the one for which my hon. Friend was arguing. I shall always protect his right to be a pacifist, but I hope that no Opposition Member is under the impression that the majority of Labour Members are pacifists--we are not.
I wish to express my gratitude to the people who have made the ammunition, guns, aircraft, uniforms, boots, tents and everything else that our armed forces have needed. If it were not for the defence manufacturing industries, we would not have succeeded in the Falklands and we certainly would not have succeeded in the Gulf.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire):
I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman has repudiated pacifism. Has he also repudiated his membership of the parliamentary Labour party Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament group between 1982 and 1986?
Mr. McWilliam:
It seems to me that 1986 is a long time ago. When I joined the CND, it was multilateralist and I could not get it to change, which is why I left. I will accept no more interruptions. If that is the standard I can expect, it would not be worth while.
If the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) reads the joint report of the Trade and Industry Committee and the Defence Committee, published during the previous Parliament, he might gain more insight into what we ought to be doing in terms of defence procurement. I am deeply worried by the proposal to form a joint company between Royal Ordnance and SNPE of France. Not that long ago--I am sorry to say--the previous Government gave away our ability to manufacture FH70 ammunition for our main field howitzers. The Belgian company that ended up with the contract refused to supply 155 mm ammunition to our forces in the Gulf. We cannot and must not allow the SNPE-Royal Ordnance joint company to go ahead, and we must continue to have the ability to manufacture military explosives in this country.
A review must address overstretch. Nights away from home, extended tour intervals and shortened periods between tour intervals are having a distinct effect on the morale of our armed forces. We must do something about that. The previous Government cut and cut and let the situation worsen without any thought for the consequences. My colleagues on the Select Committee--the majority of whom were Conservatives--felt the same as me and were prepared to produce critical reports. I can assure the House that as a member of the current Defence Committee, I shall act in no way differently from the way in which I acted on the previous Committee.
There are serious problems with procurement projects, particularly where there are high levels of system integration. We have failed in all sorts of areas--from airborne radar aircraft to frigate command and control systems and the tactical weapons system on nuclear submarines--because of one problem. The Ministry of
Defence cannot cope with high levels of system integration--which is strange, because our industry certainly can. We have one of the best information technology industries in the world, and it is capable of dealing with contracts with high degrees of sophistication and integration. It is only when the MOD's procurement process gets involved that it goes astray.
I shall give my hon. Friends on the Front Bench a piece of advice that I used to give when I was city treasurer in Edinburgh. I used to say to officials, "If you want to have unplanned works added to a contract, please bring me your proposal together with your resignation--it will save time."
I congratulate the Government on the progress on Gulf war syndrome since the general election. The Select Committee on Defence in the previous Parliament was extremely critical of the then Government for their failure to move and their assertion that the only research that was needed was psychological and, frankly--I blame not the Government but certain individuals--for trying to mislead the Committee as to possible causes. Those who were responsible have either resigned or been disciplined, but I resent the fact that it happened; if it ever happens again, I promise that I, for one, will cause trouble.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred to the defence medical services, as did my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces. When I visited the defence medical services last year, I was shocked by the demoralisation; by the state that they were in; by the fact that the three services, although it was supposed to be a tri-service system, had different arrangements; and by the discovery that the nearest officer from whom an aircraftman or aircraftwoman could get help would be a surgeon squadron leader or a surgeon group captain, and that often there was no officer they could refer to on their base. The different conditions of service for members of different services doing the same job cause resentment, and that must be dealt with.
I shall now resume my seat before another Conservative Member makes another stupid intervention.
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