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Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East): The hon. Gentleman says that many Conservative candidates lost their seats at the election because of mistakes made in defence. Only on a few issues did the polls show the Conservatives to be leading Labour in the run-up to the general election. Well, there was just one issue, and that was defence.
Mr. Hoyle: I remind the hon. Gentleman of my constituency, Chorley, and of South Ribble and the Portsmouth and Blackpool seats. How many more constituencies does the hon. Gentleman want to be reminded of? It is easy to have a memory of convenience, but let us have a memory of fact in future.
I shall move on to talk about aircraft carriers. I do not believe that it would be right to have 20,000-ton vessels. They should be of 40,000 tons plus, because such vessels will present us with greater options. The issue involves options and costs. I see the re-emergence of the Royal Navy and the corps--the Royal Marines and the Royal Navy together will be the spearhead of any defence capability. I want to see vessels that are capable of taking a fixed-wing, one-strike aircraft. What better aircraft would be available than the Eurofighter? Let us have a Fleet Air Arm version of the Eurofighter, and let us ensure that we get the right carrier for the future.
We are talking of a mass in the form of an aircraft carrier that sits, as it were, near trouble spots. The carrier can sit beyond the horizon. We are not talking about aircraft that fly out and must return to a land base; the carrier can sit near the trouble spot. There are despots around the world and we must ensure that we have the right capability.
As for Iraq, we have deployed one carrier. What better solution would there be than to have a larger carrier to ensure that we have the right back-up with aeroplanes of the right capability. Those who voted for the Government on the Iraq issue can feel that they played their part in securing the peace that may emerge. That outcome did not derive from talks alone. The threat of defence that backed up the talks ensured peace for the time being. We do not know how long that peace will last, but those Members who supported the Government will be able to hold up their heads with pride at the end of the day. That is important.
The strategic defence review will be all-embracing. I have already touched on aircraft carriers, the Navy's ships generally and the re-emergence of the Royal Navy. There has been talk of HMS Ocean, and I accept that it is the result of a decision made by the previous Government. I am pleased that I shall be seeing HMS Ocean when it is commissioned. I am pleased to be with the Royal Marines, who have a major part to play. They have been on an exercise in Norway that was bigger than those held in previous years. That proves that the Government are willing to invest in the right troops--the right people generally--to ensure that a strong capability will continue.
We must consider British defence needs and United Kingdom manufacture. The C17 is a wonderful aircraft that is capable of specific actions where needed. However, it does not have a true capability, and that is the difficulty. A future large aircraft really can provide the options required by UK defence needs. The FLA is a variant aircraft--it can be a tanker and it can take and lift everything except the battle tank. We know, of course, that we need a mixed fleet of aircraft. I believe that the FLA can back up what is already in place.
I should like to see us investing in UK defence, thereby creating UK jobs and ensuring that UK technology, which will be delivered in the form of defence contracts, will be transferred to the civil sector. Defence is extremely important and we cannot introduce advanced technology into the civil sector unless we have a strong defence manufacturing base. I believe that we can retain that capability, and that is why British Aerospace is important, along with Royal Ordnance plc, Vickers and many other companies that can still build aircraft, arms and ships.
Our shipbuilding capability was virtually lost when the previous Government were in office. I believe, however, that we can rebuild that capability.
Mr. Alan Clark (Kensington and Chelsea):
In a safe at the Ministry of Defence there will probably be found a copy of the first defence review of the past decade, which I wrote. Without wishing to emulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), who takes every opportunity to claim authorship for, and enthusiasm concerning, the millennium dome, I wish to tell the House that, were I to place a copy of my review in the Library--which I probably could do because I do not think it is classified, as I wrote it--it would be shown that all the conclusions set out in it have been validated by what has happened since.
Seven years ago, I based the review on three assumptions. The first was that the cold war was over and that our defence policy need no longer be, to use the expression of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson), Eurocentric. There is no longer any direct threat to the security of these islands and to the people who dwell therein. Secondly, the world remains a dangerous, deceitful and disagreeable environment in which nothing can be predicted with certainty. Thirdly, if the United Kingdom is to assert its influence and strength and reinforce its foreign policy, its strategy must be maritime.
There will be many hon. Members who are not present this morning, especially Labour Members, who will ask, "Why should the United Kingdom bother any longer? Its security is no longer threatened. We are a nation of only about 50 million people. We have perpetual constraints and bothers with our public spending. Surely this is a sector that we can abandon."
That would be an extremely dangerous decision, and one difficult to reverse. It would involve the final derogation of the United Kingdom from its role as a member of the United Nations Security Council. The UK would no longer be able to justify its seat in the G7 and on other international bodies that determine what will happen in an increasingly close and interdependent world. There would be certain circumstances--one cannot predict what they are--when United Kingdom citizens would be at the mercy of despots, just as we as a nation would be at the mercy of the super-powers in policy decisions. Our input into what is happening--so well illustrated by the way in which the Prime Minister and the present Government instantaneously reacted and deployed strength in the recent crisis--will no longer be feasible.
I fully accept that there are colossal budget restraints on the Department--my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) illustrated these and reinforced them with excerpts from the rumour mill in Whitehall. If the Department is to have a serious shot at attaining the change in emphasis that is necessary for the United Kingdom to sustain its international position over the next 20 or 30 years into the millennium, there will have to be a drastic shift in resources in service allocations. We will
have to revert to the pattern of 100 years ago, when the Army was little more than a colonial gendarmerie, and our security and instrument of foreign policy was the Royal Navy. There will be immense resistance to this in the Department, as the Minister has probably already experienced. For far too long, soldiers had too prominent a say in what happened and in the decisions that were taken by the Ministry of Defence. The need to deploy and maintain a large force of infantry and armour on the continent of Europe was a hangover from the second world war, and it continued into the cold war. That is no longer the case. We can reduce to a small, elite force.
We listen with interest to the rumours about the air cavalry and to those about subsuming the Parachute Regiment into this new force. I spoke earlier about soldiers and their prejudices, and their malign influence in certain sectors of the Ministry of Defence. We all know that, for the past 40 years, the Army establishment has been determined to get even with the Parachute Regiment, to cut it down to size and, preferably, out altogether if it can. Although the idea of an air cavalry is attractive, let us hope that it is not simply used as a device to get rid of the Parachute Regiment and to subsume it into the mass infantry career structure. We do not know, but we watch.
Soldiers have to be few in number, well trained, well equipped, mobile, but should not take anything like as large a proportion of the defence budget as they do at present.
We must move towards--several hon. Members mentioned this--the certainty that a fixed-wing carrier will be the central weapons system of our armed forces over the next 50 years. It must be; there is no other way to project force and carry out the operation--illustrated so effectively, but, fortunately, not carried to the extreme--that we have seen in recent weeks.
A fixed-wing carrier or two--three would be excessive--can be bought for a relatively small sum, if one compares it with the colossal sum that is allocated to Eurofighter. I always listen to the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) with great attention, but we are not of totally the same mind on Eurofighter. If the sum devoted to Eurofighter were cut in half, it would buy a couple of respectable fixed-wing carriers.
Carriers do not come on their own. There are immense ancillary costs: software, electronic counter-measures, and the support vessels that have to defend the carrier. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood said that a carrier's best defence is the carrier itself, but it is a vulnerable target. The Americans have found that, to support a carrier, one needs a considerable flotilla of ancillary vessels that carry missiles and have a counter-measure capability to ensure that it is not hit. If a carrier is lost--the House will recall that that was a primary apprehension during the Falklands conflict--the expedition is cut off at the knees.
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