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8.47 pm
Mr. Bob Russell (Colchester): The garrison in my constituency is one of the largest in Britain. The service personnel, their families and civilian employees total nearly 10,000 people. I therefore welcome the Government's commitment in the strategic defence review--and, in fairness, the commitment of the previous Government--to maintaining the importance of the Army in Colchester. I especially welcome the earlier decision to build three new barracks. While I remain opposed in principle to the use of the private finance initiative in funding the defence of the realm, I appreciate the capital development of several hundred million pounds in the coming years. I hope that the Minister can tell us tonight when he expects to make a further announcement about the new development at Colchester garrison, but an acknowledgement that it will proceed will suffice.
We have heard a great deal about the future of the Territorial Army. I urge the Government to think again on their TA proposals for the reasons that have been given on both sides of the House. In particular, will the Minister guarantee that the Colchester TA centre--a purpose-built complex within the garrison estate--will not be closed as part of TA restructuring?
When he considers the ramifications of the strategic review, and to provide a genuine value-for-money review, will the Minister reconsider the previous Government's proposal to transfer the internationally famous Defence Clothing and Textiles Agency from its established research and development premises in Colchester to a remote place in Oxfordshire? Does the Ministry of Defence consult other Departments before it makes decisions? Do the pronouncements of the Deputy Prime Minister about developing recycled land and buildings rather than green-field sites apply to MOD property?
The future of the cadets seems to be non-existent in the strategic defence review. I should welcome a statement on that from the Minister.
Mr. John M. Taylor (Solihull):
It is humbug for the Government to say that they are sustaining the cadets
Mr. Russell:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The same point has been made by speakers on both sides of the House. TA and cadet premises are often one and the same, although that is not quite so in Colchester where there are three separate units for army, air and sea cadets. If the Government are committed to the future of the cadet forces, why have they cut the cadet budget, and how does that square with the wishes of the Home Secretary to tackle juvenile crime and of the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to see young people pursuing constructive activities?
Mr. Mike Gapes (Ilford, South):
I want to make two constituency points and one more general point. However, let me first welcome the strategic defence review, which is the culmination of a long process. I worked at Labour party headquarters during the 1980s on defence, disarmament and international policy. I am pleased to say that I was secretary of the policy review group when Labour changed its policy in 1989. Throughout the 1980s, we called for a defence diversification agency and it is good to have a Government committed to introducing something along those lines. We had a long-standing commitment to a comprehensive defence review that would be driven by foreign policy, but that would take account of the needs and capabilities required for effective security for our country. I am proud that a Labour Government are doing that, too. A look at the needs of the UK and of our allies in the modern world after the cold war was long overdue. We have greater commitments now to humanitarian work, to the United Nations and to a role in peacekeeping or even, if necessary, peace enforcement throughout the world. The review is very welcome.
It is clear from the debate that there is a continuing commitment to the Bowman programme for future radio communications for the British Army. I am disappointed by the decision to award that contract to the Racal Thomson consortium rather than to the British Aerospace consortium, in which I declare a constituency interest. If the Archer programme goes ahead, I hope that the Army can have the investment and communications system that it needs for the future. The former First Sea Lord was quoted in the Financial Times of 7 October warning of the potential dangers of the United States getting so far ahead with digitisation that its European NATO allies would be unable to compete technologically. I hope that the decision to place the Bowman local area system with
a French company will not mean that the UK does not receive full technology transfer. Britain must be at the forefront of the new technologies that will be essential to the future security of our country and of our European allies.
On my second constituency-related point, I was pleased to hear the Minister of State offer firm support for the cadet movement. There is a Territorial Army in Gordon Fields in the middle of my constituency. The hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) is not here, but he will, I hope, read my remarks. Many black and Asian young men and women attend the cadets and take part in their activities. They are involved in the TA. I hope that those black and Asian men and women will feel able to go into our armed forces, and that some will achieve senior positions, including positions of command. The misogynists on the Conservative Benches may not like that, but the future requires armed forces that reflect our society.
Mr. Gray:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gapes:
No, I do not have time.
The review rightly says a lot about NATO and arms control. It includes a commitment that would not have come from the previous Government about the global importance of nuclear-free zones, along with a helpful map. It also gives helpful negative security assurances. The review mentions the importance of the work in Kosovo of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Clearly, we must make an important distinction between hard security based on NATO and softer security organisations such as OSCE. NATO should not become like OSCE. We need a firm, hard defence and security organisation in Europe, and that is why NATO must continue without becoming some weaker, generalist organisation on the OSCE model.
I am disappointed that the review and the accompanying essays contain not much discussion about the Western European Union and the European security and defence identity. Those issues are relevant for the future because in 1999 NATO will be developing a new strategic concept. We shall have to consider them. It may be that it was felt that such discussion lies in the future because there are still discussions among the allies. I am prepared to accept that, but the issues will not go away.
There is a move from some European Union countries to change the EU into a defence organisation. That would be a profound mistake. We must ensure that NATO remains the firm defence organisation, that the European Union deals with non-military aspects of security, and that the Western European Union acts as a bridge to take on the Petersberg tasks, such as peacekeeping, in the European context. It is dangerous to weaken our firm security foundations in the interests of allowing enlargement to anyone who wishes to join. I know that my Front-Bench colleagues agree, but it is not spelled out in the document. I am sure that it will be in future.
Paragraph 13 in supporting essay 6 refers to coalitions of the willing. Until we have a stronger United Nations--something that is very necessary--we shall always be dependent on ad hoc coalitions within NATO, the WEU or another mechanism. That is not entirely satisfactory because it leaves us open to the difficulties that we had in the Balkans.
We need to think long term--20, 30 or 40 years ahead--and build a strong international security architecture. That means a stronger United Nations, and giving the commitment and resources to achieve it, otherwise we shall always be too late and too slow; it will be politically difficult to do what is necessary. Until then, it is essential to continue our commitment to work with our allies in NATO, the WEU, the EU and elsewhere.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. It will not have escaped the attention of hon. Members that, if speeches were nearer five minutes than 10, more satisfaction could be afforded than would otherwise be the case.
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire):
I shall not seek to follow the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes), except to say that I agree with many of his later remarks.
In their manifesto, the Government promised to undertake a foreign-policy-led review to reassess our security and defence needs. Like so many of their pre-election promises, I regret that this one appears not to have been kept. The failure to publish the foreign policy baselines means that it is impossible for the House to assess whether the Government are seeking to match our military capability to our foreign policy commitments or are being dictated to by the Treasury.
I do not believe that this can honestly be called a review. In a review, one determines whether too much or too little money is being spent and takes appropriate action. Again, the Government have misused the English language. Instead of reviewing defence expenditure, they made it clear at the outset that, at best, defence expenditure would not increase. The acronym SDR is a misnomer. I prefer my own: LEMON, or less money on the Navy. While not a penny piece has been allocated to the two new aircraft carriers, the cuts to escorts and mine counter-measure vessels are real.
I congratulate the Government on one thing: the brilliant smoke-and-mirrors exercise of their original presentation. When I visited the royal naval air station at Yeovilton on 18 July, I met several serving officers with whom I had joined the Navy many years ago. They were delighted with the SDR. They had been promised two large aircraft carriers. I must admit that I felt a little churlish for deflating their somewhat naive expectations. I pointed out that the in-service date was 2012 and that no money had been put aside in the MOD's long-term costings. I prophesied--I hope that I am proved wrong--that, under a Labour Government, we should be lucky if even one large carrier was built. If those officers had known, as we know now, that the Government were considering extending the life of the three small Invincible class carriers by putting them out to tender for extension-of-life refits to 2022, the Labour Government's potential for duplicity would have been clear to all.
It is clear from the SDR that frigate and destroyer numbers will be reduced by nearly 10 per cent. I believe that the previous Government's cuts went far too far, and I said so at the time.
If one allows for the time spent in refits--although that has been reduced in latter years--the time spent on docking and essential defects, self-maintenance periods and the time spent on passage and other commitments, there will not be enough escorts to protect two aircraft carriers concurrently operating in different oceans. Yet that is one of the promises in the SDR. The Government should do what the previous Government would not do. Rather than paying ships off, they should put them into reserve and get industry to design command and control, propulsion and defence systems that are modular in nature so that the hulls can be recommissioned and the modern systems put into those hulls at short notice if a crisis looms.
The review heralds a change from open ocean warfare to near-coast or littoral operations. The SDR states that shallow water operations in United Kingdom waters are of declining importance. While I accept that there will be more near-coast operations, to neglect UK shallow water operations is a mistake.
The old Soviet Union--most people do not seem to know this--sold tens of thousands of ground and buoyed mines to nations run by dictators whose views are inimical to ours. Those mines are easily deployed by fishing or merchant vessels, by submarine or even by air. All the likely flashpoints around the world--the Arabian gulf, the Adriatic, and the Spratley islands--and most of the strategic maritime waypoints are in water that can be easily mined.
I am surprised that the blackmail of maritime mine warfare has not been used so far, but I think that that position is unlikely to continue. So to cut the number of mine counter-measure vessels is wrong. We should be building more. The Government should reverse the previous Government's mistaken policy of frittering away the Royal Naval Reserve by using it to make up the complement of major warships. Instead, they should continue to use it in its specialised mine counter-measure role and re-equip it with small mine-hunting vessels capable of being airlifted in the largest heavy-lift aircraft to potential trouble spots that would otherwise be weeks away by sea.
Still on the SDR but at a tangent to it, may I ask the Secretary of State when he comes to read Hansard to consider a suggestion of mine? What do we know about Russia? We know that it is in dire need of generous financial assistance. It is in our interest to provide such assistance. We fear that terrorists may get access to Russian nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. So why does not the international community negotiate to purchase as many of Russia's weapons of mass destruction as we can and arrange for them to be destroyed, possibly on Russian soil? I recognise that considerable work has been done on the strategic arms reduction talks and other treaty discussions, but the process is slow and fails to get to the heart of the problem, which is that, in an anarchic state, which Russia is today, everything is for sale and an unpaid Russian military may decide to sell weapons to the highest bidder.
9 pm
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