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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr. Lewis Moonie): Ron Brown.
Mr. Cook: I did not realise that he had such potential, although one never knows what might happen in Scotland these days.
We tell our constituents, "We have an agreement with the Russians, and the Chinese are no threat, but the lunatics could well be directing intercontinental ballistic missiles at your warning station." We will have a problem selling that to the electorate.
Furthermore, it does not matter whether or not we have an early warning station because a missile has to take off, travel and re-enter, and somewhere along that path it has to be identified and met "bullet on bullet", as the Americans say. That means that we must be able to detect it very early. If the missiles meet in transit and the strike is effective, there is the potential for serious fall-out, whether the missiles have a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon. We all know of the problems caused by strontium 90--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I am afraid the hon. Gentleman has had his time.
Mr. Paul Keetch (Hereford):
I shall be brief because I know that other hon. Members want to speak, not least my hon. Friends the Members for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) and for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), who each have extensive military facilities in their constituences.
Before I turn to the White Paper, I want to deal with the situation in Kosovo. As the Minister for the Armed Forces said, I was in Kosovo two weeks ago. On Mitrovica, there is no doubt that the basic soldiering skills that we employed in our sector of Kosovo were not employed in the northern sector. The basics of searching a flat and installing decent roadblocks--activities that, sadly, we have 30 years' experience of in Ulster--were not done by the French in that sector, and there was a large build-up of arms that have been used.
There is a wider problem in Kosovo in that our forces rather ambiguous remit, which the UN mission in Kosovo police will also have when the full complement arrives, means that frequently when criminals are arrested, they are held for one or two nights in detention and then released. I hope that the Government will assess the problem and that the UN will get to grips with the fact that people who have committed serious crimes need to be kept in detention, because that is not happening at the moment.
I turn now to the White Paper, which is a rather limited document. We hoped to have something approaching a progress report on the strategic defence review, but sadly we did not get that. We welcomed the SDR's emphasis on an expeditionary strategy, rapid deployability and mobility. We have seen from the Kosovo crisis that the assumptions made in the SDR were true. However, the expeditionary strategy that underpins the SDR means that our forces must be kept in a high state of readiness so that they can respond quickly to a crisis.
Many hon. Members have mentioned the problems of strategic lift, which has not been addressed with enough urgency. At present, we could not deploy the joint rapid reaction force quickly enough to meet the likely requirements of the new strategic environment. As the right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) said, we cannot even get helicopters to Mozambique.
The MOD urgently needs to pursue new options for the short-term strategic airlift programme, because the progress of the long-term programme is halted by a lack
of progress on the short-term programme. The SDR committed the UK to a force projection strategy, so we need the ability to project force, and fast. We do not have it.
Since the publication of the SDR, 4,500 troops have continued to be deployed in Bosnia, and we have undertaken operations in Kosovo, East Timor and Iraq, as well as deploying an extra 2,000 soldiers to Northern Ireland during last summer's marching season. Overstretch is perhaps the most pressing problem facing our troops, and the White Paper has not addressed it satisfactorily.
In the period leading up to the performance report, two major UK exercises were cancelled due to operational over-commitment, and a further eight NATO and UN exercises had to be cancelled because troops scheduled to take part in them were on operational deployment. That is bound to have a negative impact on our forces' training and morale. Cancellation of exercises can quickly reduce capability because forces need to be trained in all aspects of war fighting. Britain's armed forces can maintain their status as among the best in the world only if they continue to be trained to the highest levels.
The MOD has spent millions on its recruitment policy in the past few years, and as the Minister said, the initiative has had some success. In 1996-97, the RAF's intake was just 2,684, and that increased in 1998-99 to more than 4,000. However, there is still a large gap in all services, particularly the Army, between the trained requirement and the trained strength of the force.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) and the right hon. Member for Bridgwater mentioned the disparity with reference to the Secretary of State's remarks last week. The trained requirement of our Army is 105,300, but the total strength in 1999 was only 99,700. The Secretary of State said last week that the requirement will be achieved by 2005, but many people believe that it will take far longer--31 years was suggested.
I suspect that the problem is not so much recruitment as retention, and we should consider why people leave the armed forces. There is no point in investing large sums in training personnel if they decide to leave a couple of years later. The recruitment level for fast jet pilots, for example, is now running at over 100 per cent. of the target, but the retention level is well below the target. It would cost the Government much less to offer sensible, practical retention measures than it does to maintain the current situation, which is obviously causing a huge strain on our defence budget.
We have to examine the underlying factors that are causing service men and women to end their careers. As hon. Members have already said, personnel are increasingly expected to spend prolonged periods away from home on operational duties. That problem is not new, but it is increasing and it is not about to change. We therefore need to concentrate on ways of keeping morale high among our troops, improving conditions for service families and maintaining a constant standard of training for our personnel across the board.
Measures must be taken to improve morale and make sure that our investment in our personnel does not go down the drain. Relatively small enhancements in welfare
support for service personnel and their families can cause a disproportionate increase in morale. We welcome the extension of free telephone calls for personnel and the introduction of periods of post-operational leave, which compensate personnel who have had to leave their families for extended periods. We welcome the service families task force and the learning forces initiatives, but there is still much more to do. The SFTF meets on an ad hoc basis and is not particularly accessible to service families.
In the continuous attitude survey for service leavers, the most frequently cited reason for people leaving the services was the effect of service on family life. In the 1999-2000 Christmas and new year period, 35 per cent. of the Army's trained strength was serving abroad, which is an increase of 3,500 personnel on the same period the year before.
There are no minimum consistent standards for the provision of welfare for our service families. The families of the 1,400 personnel based at the Warminster garrison can use two playgroups, a creche, a mother and toddler group and a youth group. However, the families of the 7,698 personnel based at Catterick have no such facilities.
First and most importantly, the MOD needs to build welfare into its policies as a key target and set minimum consistent standards that can be applied to all our garrison bases. The SFTF needs to meet much more frequently and should revamp its priorities to include measures such as a national audit of base facilities, to ensure that there is a common standard throughout the country. It should appoint a families officer for every base to ensure that proper advice is given on jobs and local schooling and housing.
It would be all too easy for the Government to cut into those already fragile welfare support networks and educational and recreational facilities in trying to meet the much-talked-about 3 per cent. efficiency savings, which were also mentioned by the right hon. Member for Bridgwater. We all know the problems associated with the Government's 3 per cent. annual efficiency savings. My main concern is that what the MOD might classify as an efficiency saving is, in effect, a cut. Two exercises have been cancelled this year due to constraints. That will affect our training and morale.
As costs are cut in response to budget reductions, the Government have been unable to produce sufficient evidence that they are not simply doing less with less money. The 3 per cent. efficiency savings have been described as challenging. It is time that the scheme was abandoned, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife said last week.
The smart procurement initiative was one of the three main themes of the strategic defence review, and was seen as a way of making procurement "cheaper, faster, better", with savings of £2 billion to be guaranteed over 10 years. Although we appreciate that the bulk of those savings will be made towards the end of that period, there seems to be a lack of clear evidence of any significant progress as a result of SPI. The proposed savings have been described as unrealistic by some military leaders.
Major procurement projects are running, on average, 43 months late, and costs overran by £1.3 billion in 1998 alone. Only two projects are expected to meet their original in-service date. As has been mentioned, the National Audit Office report found that 60 per cent.
of equipment accepted by the MOD did not meet the operational requirements, and identified £60 million of costs over a five-year period associated with such equipment.
We have heard much in this debate about Tornado and the SA80. The hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) made some exciting comments about his A to Z. It is true that the problem is not new, but we see more and more examples of military blunders by the MOD. Eurofighter costs have overrun by at least £1.36 billion, but it is due to enter service in 2002, three years behind schedule. Challenger 2 cost £1 billion more than expected.
I have seen both weapons in the past few weeks, and they are impressive, but we must get things right, and there is little evidence that smart procurement is enabling us to do so. I should make it clear that I and my colleagues hope that SPI succeeds, but we need to know the criteria by which to judge its success. The Government need to tell us soon, so that the House and the country can make an informed judgment on whether it is working.
In last week's debate, the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire (Mr. Graham) spoke with his usual passion about the proposed closure of the Royal Ordnance factory in Bishopton in his constituency. It appeared that he wanted a meeting. Other hon. Members have also claimed that questions and letters have not been answered.
6.11 pm
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