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Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North) rose--
Mr. Davies: If the hon. Gentleman is going to tell us what his Government's attitude is to ABM defence, and what they are saying to the US Administration, I will give way to him. I see that he is not going to answer, so I am
afraid that I am not giving way to him. However, I will give way to any Minister who cares to set the record straight.
Equally, my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) made it clear on Tuesday, the first day of the debate, that the Government are not playing straight with the country, or else are not clear in their own mind about their attitude to our nuclear deterrent. He asked the extremely pertinent question: are the Government still committed to the Kaufman doctrine, which came in when the Labour party abandoned unilateralism in the 1990s--the doctrine said that we would keep our nuclear weapons so long as anyone else kept theirs--or have they gone to something rather different?
The Ministers of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Members for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) and for Neath (Mr. Hain), used a very different formulation recently; it was also quoted in last week's debate. The hon. Member for Leicester, East said:
The Secretary of State for Defence made a slightly different formulation. He added the phrase, "give up our nuclear weapons without endangering our security interests," but that is a subjective, not objective, criterion. It means that, if a Minister determines that our security interests can allow us to give those weapons up, we will do so, so there is complete obscurity. There is complete muddle where there should, above all, be complete clarity. Deterrence depends on clarity and credibility, and it is one of the most primordial aspects of defence policy.
Not only is the Government's defence procurement policy in a mess; not only are they incapable of formulating clear strategic long-term policies, contrary to the promises that they glibly make in their documents, but they are presenting the country with a long-term budget plan for defence that makes it absolutely clear that they will be able to fulfil none of their aspirations.
The figures are graphically set out in the Library document on defence statistics, which shows that, in 1999-2000, the current financial year, defence spending in real terms will fall by 3.4 per cent; that next year it will fall by 0.1 per cent.; and that the year after, 2001-2002, it will fall by 1.8 per cent. There is that cumulative fall in the resources to be made available to defence in real terms.
There is an even bigger fall in the share of gross domestic product that goes on defence. By the end of the Labour Government's term of office, it will be down to 2.3 or 2.2 per cent., which is the European average. That includes countries such as Luxembourg, Denmark and Belgium, which are not famed for their enormous defence effort. That is something that the Government cannot get away from. They are trying to get away from it in the most bogus fashion. First, they say that there will be efficiency gains. That claim was completely exploded by the Defence Committee, which showed that the Government not only do not have a list of the supposed efficiency gains, but are trying to claim as an efficiency
gain--I think that the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) discovered it when he was on the Committee--the closure of RAF Ash. My hon. Friends the Members for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) and for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) discovered during the Select Committee proceedings--which are all in the excellent report--that the Government were trying to claim, as an efficiency gain by them, savings from the closure of RAF Laarbruch by the previous Government under the "Front Line First" proposals. It is obvious that the efficiency gains are bogus.
Anyone with a business background will recognise the inexorable logic of it. The Government cannot go on achieving efficiency gains indefinitely at an arbitrary level--they say 3 per cent. per annum--because there are diminishing returns for efficiency gains. And one certainly cannot make efficiency gains with a declining budget, because declining budgets cause diseconomies of scale. The Minister's point on efficiency gains was, therefore, thoroughly bogus.
Before the Minister says that the previous, Conservative Administration also cut defence spending--I know that he will try to make that point in reply-- I remind him that the previous Administration faced a fundamental and structural change in the threat that we face: the collapse of the Warsaw pact and the end of the cold war.
Mr. Brazier:
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Davies:
I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not give way, but I am trying to move matters on.
The Government have faced no such structural change, let alone threat reduction. On the contrary, in the past two or three years, the world seems to have become a more dangerous--not less dangerous--place. We have had Desert Fox, Kosovo, East Timor and other developments that could not possibly have been predicted. Against that background, the course on which the Government have launched themselves is thoroughly irresponsible.
Mr. Bruce George (Walsall, South):
I was touched by the generous obituaries offered by my colleagues for our good friend Michael Colvin. He served on the Defence Committee since July 1992. In 1995, he became the Committee's Chairman, and, after the 1997 general election, he served as my deputy Chairman. Last month, he left the Defence Committee. The death of Michael and his wife is a tragedy not only for his constituents and his constituency association, but for Parliament and the House of Commons Defence Committee. I should like to express the Committee's commiseration and sadness.
Michael Colvin's contribution in monitoring the Executive was immense. He was obeyed, even in a trench or in a tent. He was so elegant, but also so wonderful--partly because of his military background--in expressing to members of the military how much the Committee empathised with them. He was a splendid Chairman.
I was not able to hear Michael Colvin's final speech, in which he complimented the Defence Committee almost as though he were describing the end of one phase of his life. He said:
Michael Colvin always stressed the Committee's importance in providing, and always sustaining, constructive criticism and consensus. A couple of months ago, a friend of mine, who is not of the Government, said to me, "Tell me, George, what's DERA?" I explained that it is the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. He asked, "How will the Government come out in your report on it?" I winced. He asked, "How about the Territorial Army? Your Committee has been pretty hot on it. How does the Government come out on the TA?" I not only winced, but grimaced, and looked even more ugly. He ran through a list of Committee reports, which are either forthcoming or already published, and, on each subject, he asked, "How does the Government come out on it?" Each time I said, "Pretty awful." Finally, he turned to me and said--I shall expunge the expletive--"George, whose blanking side are you on?" That was the ultimate compliment, because it showed that our Committee had put aside political partisanship. We did not say what the Opposition or the Ministry of Defence wanted us to say. We told it like it was.
Many of the reports produced under Michael Colvin's chairmanship were very critical of the Conservative Government, and that tradition, which began 20 years ago, is being maintained. He paid tribute to the staff, the advisers and everyone involved with the Committee, and we are all deeply grateful.
I shall not follow the example of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies). My voice would not allow it and I am not on stimulants. I shall propose a new word for the dictionary: the verb "to Gazza", meaning to attempt to inflict physical damage on an adversary and end up maiming oneself.
I am delighted that many of our reports are tagged. I was in Moscow when the debate took place last week, but I note that there were 54 references to our Committee, almost all of them very favourable. Our report did not include Kosovo, on which we are producing a major report; the European security and defence identity, on which we are producing a substantial report; or any detail on equipment, because we are producing a major report on that. What we did was good, and I am proud of it.
In our report, we discussed defence reporting to Parliament, which has certainly improved in quantity, and we are asking for an improvement in quality. We expressed some reservations about the Secretary of State's
comment that the White Paper might not be produced annually. We went into enormous detail on overstretch. A previous report said:
Our report goes into great detail on overstretch, undermanning and the difficulties of recruitment and retention. I look back and see an enormous number of reports in the past 20 years commenting on just that. One said:
When we are satisfied with progress towards our goal of the global elimination of nuclear weapons, we will ensure that British nuclear weapons are included in negotiations.--[Official Report, 24 January 2000; Vol. 343, c. 36W.]
That is extremely different. It may be that the Government are prepared to give up our nuclear weapons while some other countries have nuclear weapons; that is the essence of it.
I am sorry to have left the Committee.--[Official Report, 22 February 2000; Vol. 344, c. 1444.]
If only we had realised that not only had he left the Committee, but that he would be leaving Parliament and life. The death of Michael and his wife is a matter of immense sadness to me. I am still stunned by the news. However, his memory will for ever live strongly and positively in my mind.
In terms of broad policy, there is little new in the . . . White Paper
and expressed the hope that there would be more in the next one. But that enthusiasm and aspiration were not realised. That was a 1985-86 report. Some White Papers have lacked content.
It appears self-evident to us that matching resources to tasks is becoming increasingly fraught, stretching both crews and vessels to unwise levels even during peacetime . . . It is our view that this shortcoming poses a serious, and potentially fatal, threat to the long-term security of this country.
That was not our most recent White Paper report, but one from 1992-93. The criticisms of overstretch have been made many times before.
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