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9.4 pm
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): It was Lord Mayhew who, while Liberal spokesman on defence in another place, said that the call for a defence review in opposition was a glorious escape route from a policy. We know that the Labour party in opposition was caught in a pincer movement, where any policy acceptable to the country was not going to be acceptable to the party. One has to congratulate the Labour party on the way in which in opposition it put the invisible man in charge of defence policy, who followed his orders to kill the issue as effectively as possible. The right hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) certainly did his political task well.
In opposition, as it aspired to govern, the Labour party should have thought privately and deeply about defence. There is no evidence that it has done so. It is impossible to find any speech devoted to defence made in public by the leader of the Labour party in the past decade. Indeed, it is impossible to find almost any remark other than the standard eulogy to the armed forces in any speech that he has made. Even if one had dissected the speeches of the official Opposition spokesman before 1 May, one would have had only the vaguest clue to any potential Labour
policy. One is reminded of Chancellor Kohl's remark 10 days ago, when talking about the search for the Government's policy on economic and monetary union, that there was no point in trying to find out as they did not know the policy themselves. In one sense, that is why we have arrived at the strategic defence review.
In the framing of the strategic defence review, I welcome the desire for consensus, of which much has been made. If we are to have consensus, the easiest way to achieve it would be on the foreign policy base line--but there is no Green Paper or White Paper on it for us to discuss today. The explanation that I was given--that the finding of a foreign policy base line is part of an iterative process--is fine-sounding waffle. Agreement has been possible between the parties, but the chance has been missed.
The speeches by the Secretary of State to the Royal United Services Institute, the English Speaking Union and the Select Committee on Defence were also fine-sounding words, but so vague. In his memorable phrase, they were so much "mother pie and applehood". In yesterday's debate, the Secretary of State said:
I am afraid that the conclusion that we must draw--and are entitled to draw--is that the process is a news management exercise. Yesterday's story was about an expanded role for women in the armed forces. Today's story in the papers is about recruiting the homeless into the Army. On widening the employment of women and widening the search for recruits, I entirely agree with right hon. and hon. Members on the Treasury Bench. It is a sensible approach to the manpower and recruitment problems in the lean years of the 1990s, which we were discussing in the Army in the late 1980s. However, we should not lower the standard of trained troops.
The Minister will know that this generation, which is--I am afraid--in many respects a couch-potato generation, requires an increase in training levels and an increase in resources devoted to the training budget. That is one of the serious strains that the Government will have to address in putting effective troops on the ground.
The absence of a foreign policy base line is a pity. The conclusion that we draw is that it is possible to change that foreign policy base line at any time in the process. In a sense, we are waiting for the Treasury axe to fall.
The real purpose of the defence review under Labour and the task that it has been given by project Blair--which defines the overriding policy of the Government as their re-election--is, first, to cause no trouble and to reassure the defence interest and, secondly, to generate sufficient money for health and education in years three, four and five of this Parliament. I must congratulate the Prime Minister on appointing a team that will reassure the defence community in the early stages. He has two Ministers of State who are expert--indeed so expert that I wonder whether the Secretary of State for Defence has had a testing time as they have demonstrated their expertise over the past six months. The Secretary of State
and his team are solid citizens in the eyes of the people who support defence. The team will be sorely tested in the months ahead, and let us hope that the faith that the defence community has invested in that team is realised.
So far, defence seems to be coming quietly. In the review to date, which has had no political direction, we seem to be heading towards the same answers as before. The three defence roles that we had under the previous Government will be translated, so I understand, into seven defence missions. The 50 military tasks will be translated into 30. The troops-to-tasks question will produce the same answer. The real change to our defence posture came in "Options for Change", as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) made clear yesterday. The underlying assumptions in "Options for Change", which was the real defence review for the end of the cold war, were correct. He got some issues at the margin wrong, including infantry numbers, although we restored two battalions in 1993.
The Minister of State yesterday drew attention to the problem of soldiers serving back-to-back tours in Bosnia. That happened to members of my regiment--the Light Dragoons, which is an armoured reconnaissance regiment. The catastrophic policy in "Options for Change" was to cut armoured reconnaissance from five regular regiments to two. I hope that the Minister of State will find room in the reorganisation to restore the three armoured reconnaissance regiments that were cut, because such units are eminently deployable and flexible enough to perform the tasks that face the modern Army. Perhaps the Minister of State will be able to produce six proper armoured regiments with 50 tanks each, once we have our force of 300 Challenger 2s deployed, which would mean no change in cap badges or regimental numbers.
The review is addressing the same old questions. What is Britain's place in the world? What capability should we be able immediately to deploy? What national capabilities must be preserved in terms of our defence industrial base? What military capabilities must be preserved, even if they are unlikely to be deployed immediately? How much should our nation spend on defence in the absence of an immediate threat? All the evidence suggests that the answers to those questions are the same. The Secretary of State for Defence told the Defence Committee that he understood the requirement for high-intensity conflict capability and therefore the need for armoured infantry and self-propelled artillery. He talked about a global role for the United Kingdom, which means an amphibious capability, with aircraft carriers to provide air cover over troops we deploy beyond these shores.
I welcome the fact that the Eurofighter is exempt from the review. The Royal Air Force must have an effective defence capability and all the evidence suggests that the Eurofighter is the right answer. If it is not, Ministers have been badly misled for at least a decade and I cannot believe that that is the case.
I am concerned about the process. First, is the process of the defence review genuine? What will happen when it becomes clear that more money is required for defence, not less? Secondly--and this is the defining question--I fear that civil servants who are running the defence review wish to define the issues for 20 years ahead. When I was in the Ministry of Defence, it was difficult enough to make sense of the long-term costings for year 10. If we
define issues 20 years in advance, we shall cut off too many military options by trying to address the tidy minds of the bureaucrats.
My major concern about the review is the same as that expressed by many other hon. Members--the role of reserves and cadets. The reserves and cadets have few friends inside the Ministry of Defence. The Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and even the Regular Army are not friends of the reserves and cadets, who take away resources. Their only allies are the politicians. The Secretary of State talked yesterday about getting the maximum value for money solely for defence. He must think about the role of cadets in the wider community and the effect on the personal development of many young people--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat.
Mr. Keith Simpson (Mid-Norfolk):
In the past two days, many right hon. and hon. Members have spoken with feeling about their support for the armed forces and the defence industry. Like them, I have elements of the Army and the RAF in my constituency.
The hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) pointed out that this is a strange form of defence debate because we have very little to debate. It has been interesting, but there has been no policy document or White Paper to debate. We do not even have in the Library the defence performance document that the Minister for the Armed Forces promised in the summer would be placed there in the autumn. We were promised a mission statement from the MOD, but that has not appeared.
A general area of policy has been outlined in a series of speeches because--understandably, in many respects--Ministers do not want to be pinned down. Let us try to discover what this cautious defence review, heavily influenced by the Treasury, will come up with. One does not need six months to do that.
Hon. Members will have concluded that the big idea will be to restructure our armed forces into an expeditionary force capability. The House will realise that a series of crucial questions arising from that will affect personnel and equipment. First, such an expeditionary force capability probably will be expensive, as the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee has pointed out. Secondly, it will put even greater strain on our armed forces in terms of the number of tours that they will have to undertake.
In a few months, Ministers will be faced with making real decisions about major items of equipment including air, land and maritime systems. Are we to have new carriers? Will we have a future large aircraft capability? Hon. Members know that this is an area of difficulty and that it is highly unlikely that we will get both. We have not begun to debate the issue because Ministers have preferred to talk in generalisations.
Next July or August, we will gather here to debate the strategic defence review White Paper, which will fall into the orbit of the comprehensive spending review. Ministers will have to come up with some real decisions, and I fear that many hon. Members will be disappointed. The crux is that we and the electorate were promised a strategic
defence review with a big vision. What we have so far is a cautious tale--not a lion that roared, but a mouse that squeaked in the corner. Many people will be disappointed, particularly Labour Members. There will be a series of options that Ministers will have difficulty explaining.
My final point is a personal one. Much has been made today about the culture in the British armed forces. There is no doubt that the armed forces have to change and are, in many respects, highly conservative. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr. Cohen) is not here, because he quoted from a poorly written article by a serving officer who churned out a load of old thinking--possibly sociology--from 10 or 15 years ago which has no relation to much of what the armed forces are concerned with today.
"The British people . . . believed that we would protect and improve the tools that underpin Britain's place in the world, particularly our armed forces . . . We will not betray the trust of the British people."--[Official Report, 27 October 1997; Vol. 299, c. 610.]
How can one protect--let alone improve--Britain's armed forces if one begins the defence review process by saying that there will be no more money?
9.14 pm
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