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7.21 pm
Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport): The defence review was couched in grand and sweeping terms. In his announcement on 28 May, the Secretary of State said that the review would
- "provide Britain's Armed Forces with a new sense of clarity, coherence and consensus. The review will be foreign policy led . . . the review will look afresh at all aspects of our policy and programmes."
In the summer, shortly after their election, the Government found for the first time, not surprisingly, that they faced a funding crisis in the national health service. I say that it was not surprising because the Government kept to the spending targets of the previous Government, but did not allow for inflation so there was a shortfall of some 2.5 per cent. What happened? The Secretary of State for Defence was mugged in Whitehall in broad daylight by the Treasury. The mugger demanded money with menaces. It had a knife and was prepared to cut, as the Treasury always is.
The Secretary of State had a foolproof evasion technique at that point. The Government had announced on 28 May, with all the authority of government, that there would be a fundamental review of defence with no holds barred. However, the Secretary of State did not dispute the matter with the Treasury. He gave in. His response to the threat was, in the immortal words of the Minister for the Armed Forces:
Dr. Reid:
I know that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to mislead the House. If he read the whole quotation, it would say:
Mr. Viggers:
I am sorry, I cannot give way again, even to the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have the greatest respect.
So the Government's defence policy is defeatist. It is also blinkered. The Government said that they would
Eurofighter looks what it is--a conventional 1980s air frame with poor stealth characteristics and limited range. It lacks thrust vectoring and it needs afterburners to sustain supersonic flight. At a cost of £15 billion, it will take an enormous amount out of the defence budget, so why is it excluded from the defence review? The answer is that the Labour Government have excluded Eurofighter to protect jobs. As in so many cases, the Labour party is showing its true colours. It believes that defence is a job creation agency. Just when we need flexibility and mobility, we are locked into the old inflexibilities of the cold war. So the defence review is blinkered.
The defence review is also doctrinaire. Despite the promise in his announcement of 28 May, the Secretary of State has taken one more issue out of the review--the opening of more posts to women, which was broadly welcomed by Labour Members. I saw many of them nodding happily yesterday. I wonder how many of those who were nodding had been in a trench, a tank or a spy bunker. Very few hon. Members now have experience in the armed forces, and many also lack experience of the armed forces. It is the duty of those who have experience in the armed forces to point out the stresses, pressures, space constraints and interaction of loyalties in the armed forces and to say that the presence of women will complicate them. I do not take sides on the issue. I should like to discuss it with those in the armed forces and hear their views.
However, if we are to have a fundamental strategic defence review, surely the Government should have had the courtesy to discuss with the House of Commons the opening of posts to women rather than announcing it in the opening speech of the two-day debate. Exactly the same applies to homosexuality in the armed forces. It is a serious issue. I remember the fluent and powerful speech that the current Minister for the Armed Forces made in support of the status quo at the end of the proceedings of the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill, which I chaired.
It was a sufficiently important issue to be the subject of a free vote. It concerns me that the issue is also part of the strategic defence review. The fact that the Government have announced that there will be another free vote shows that they are more interested in political correctness than in military efficiency.
The strategic defence review is also unimaginative. It does not deal with the great issues of British foreign policy, our place in the world and how we can make ourselves and others more secure. As the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) reported, countries in central and eastern Europe are racked with internal and external problems. How can we help them? They are hopeful, fearful and very uncertain. Where is the foreign policy framework within which the strategic defence review will take place?
Important developments are taking place in foreign affairs. NATO is expanding to take in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Other countries are making forceful demands for further expansion. I should like to see the "Partnership for Peace" expanded, rather than NATO.
We should consider what encouragement we can give through the Ministry of Defence to countries in central and eastern Europe, many of which are uniquely geared to the military-industrial combines that produced weapons in the past. In removing those combines, we remove from those countries an important part of their industry. Could not the Government produce a new initiative on arms procurement, to use the skills of companies such as Sukhoi, and Antonov in Kiev, which I visited recently? Antonov's design centre has produced the Antonov 70, which has many of the characteristics that we need for our heavy lift capability. Why are there no initiatives with other European states, especially those that most need help?
Looking outside Europe, why was the Secretary of State so vague about our involvement outside the NATO area? Would not this debate have been an ideal opportunity to put forward new ideas for discussion? Do the Government have a view on the United Nations developing its own international military staff? Do the Government think that they could contribute more to peacekeeping, perhaps by promoting the idea of a staff college for peacekeeping here in the United Kingdom, as we have unique qualifications owing to our special information on civil defence and aids to civil power?
Mr. Frank Cook (Stockton, North):
It may be of some help to the House if I put it on the record that I no longer serve on the Select Committee on Defence. That is a
I have one or two points to make before I turn to the main thrust of my speech which is, as the House might expect, land mines. Comments have been made about NATO enlargement and its cost. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) said that he could not see the justification for NATO enlargement. Initially, I was also a little suspicious and wondered why, if NATO had been successful, we needed to improve on it.
The truth is that NATO's character is changing dramatically. I refer my hon. Friend to the comments of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Bell), who, sad to say, has left the Chamber--I know that my hon. Friend took note of them at the time--about the pre-emptive deployment in places such as Rwanda and Albania. That illustrates the sort of character that NATO is developing. It has been assisted by the development of the "Partnership for Peace" formula.
The NATO nations--on a 16-plus-one basis--can bring in other nations, agree the semaphores and dialogue, and harmonise the equipment and disciplines necessary for participating collectively in peace maintenance activities. NATO is no longer the NATO that we used to know. I used to be an advocate of withdrawal from NATO, but if we do not learn day by day, we are defeated. The one lesson that I have learnt--and I have been a delegate since 1987--is that if NATO had not existed when the wall came down, we would have had to invent it. The people who are most grateful to it now are the central and eastern European nations, which are clamouring to join. I suspect that Russia, although it has not yet gathered the strength to knock on the door, is ready and waiting for the door to be opened.
We have heard much in the debate about the value of our personnel, both male and female. To those who are worried about women in our forces I say that women are already there and performing important work--it is a question of what role they fulfil. We have heard about their value, the importance of their families, the distress that can be caused and the stress to which they are exposed.
"One throws £168 million in the basket."
I submit that those words deserve to be carved on a granite plinth and placed outside the Ministry of Defence to record the Minister's first brush with a hostile power.
"One takes £246 million. One throws £168 million in the basket. Whatever is left represents what was achieved during the negotiations."--[Official Report, 27 October 1997; Vol. 299, c. 678.]
Mr. Viggers:
I attended more bilateral meetings in the Treasury when I was a Parliamentary Private Secretary than the Minister or, I suspect, any hon. Member present has. It is possible for Ministers to stand up to the Treasury, which does not divide capital and income. Ministers can take a line. On this occasion, the Ministry
"look afresh at all aspects of our policy and programmes",
but the review will not examine two aspects. One is Trident. That is correct, because Trident is a unique nuclear deterrent. The second is the Eurofighter, which has a fixed number of 232 purchases. Why Eurofighter? It was initially an air-to-air combat aircraft in the production of which four nations participated. After delays and cost increases, it was redefined to have also a ground attack role with anti-armour missiles and stand-off air-to-surface missiles. Those will inhibit the air-to-air role. One does not need to be a pilot to see that Eurofighter is dull. The Mig 29 Fulcrum aircraft has performed unbelievable feats of aerobatics at air shows in the west for a decade. The Sukhoi 27 Flanker and its derivatives are a generation ahead of Eurofighter in agility, even though they are a whole generation older.
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