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7.50 pm
Mr. Jamie Cann (Ipswich): Conservative Members have talked about capability. I believe that the strategic defence review and the White Paper have led to a capability that we have not had for many years, and certainly for two decades: the ability to be on the ground in brigades, serviced and covered by air, in two different theatres for six months at a time. The overstretch caused by Northern Ireland has prevented that for a long time.
I welcome the fact that, after about 20 years, we have stopped pretending that we have aircraft carriers and are proposing to replace the Fearless and the Intrepid with
craft that will carry up to 40 or 50 aeroplanes. A lot of Conservative Members have talked for a long time about replacing them, but they never got round to doing it. Labour has nothing to apologise for in its defence programme.
Unlike the odd Conservative Member and some Labour Members, I am proud of what we have done in Bosnia and Kosovo. I am proud that we were prepared to step in and stop genocide. I am afraid that I do not worry too much about minor losses--it is a terrible thing to say--among civilians, when we prevented hundreds of thousands of such losses, getting people off the mountainsides and back to their homes in Kosovo. It is only a shame that between ourselves and the United Nations we have not managed to get as many people home in Bosnia as we should have by now; but that concerns not the defence forces but the way in which we organise ourselves in the European Union and the UN.
Neither the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) nor anyone else in the House has ever managed to tell me what else we could have done. We intervened and saved lives, and I am proud of that. Some lives were lost but, unfortunately, since the days of jousting in about 1300, it has been impossible to fight a war without some civilians being killed. Who can tell me that we as a nation and NATO as a whole did not do the absolute maximum, at the risk of our own people's lives, to ensure that as few civilians as possible were killed? I am sorry that some colleagues are not as proud as I am of what we did.
The anti-ballistic missile treaty has been mentioned. I am not sure that it has anything to do with the White Paper but, as the subject was not ruled out of order, my response must also be in order. The Americans are proposing to tackle a distinct threat posed by the fact that nations such as Libya, Iraq and Syria, through technology developed in China and North Korea, will soon be able to put a missile into this country. That missile could contain a nuclear warhead, chemicals, nerve gas or whatever else someone such as Saddam or Gaddafi can come up with.
The Americans want to put a missile site in Alaska with 100 interceptors that can stop that happening to them, and they are prepared, if we pay our share, to put the same facility in northern Europe to stop it happening to us. I believe that £3 billion spent over 10 years among all the EU states is not a bad investment to stop anthrax being spread in Southwark, for example, where I live in London.
The proposal has nothing to do with Russia or China. Russia has 4,500 ballistic missiles of which perhaps 1,500 are operational. The scale of operation that the Americans are proposing cannot stop those, but it can stop the rogue missile: if five interceptors are fired at it, one will probably get it. The proposal is eminently sensible and we should go along with it. I am sure that if the people of Halifax were told about it seriously--if any press were attending this debate, for example--they might even agree to it, too.
People have talked about a nuclear strike. We are not about to launch a nuclear strike against Baghdad--we are a civilised nation, for goodness sake--but we have to take defensive measures against rogue states. Nuclear strikes have not happened for 50 years, with the Mexican stand-off between huge powers--I was a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament for one whole year--and, frankly, that has served us well.
I think that we should arm all our 10 submarines with Tomahawk missiles. They should be offshore supporting every task force that we have. They can reach 500 miles inland, and 80 per cent. of the world's population and nearly every capital city other than Moscow are in that range. They are a wonderful back-up for our forces.
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury):
I join others in paying a brief tribute to a remarkable colleague. Michael Colvin was the last member of the Defence Committee to have served in action--coincidentally in an operation in which my father took part. He was a distinguished colleague, a very kind man and a good friend to many of us on both sides of the House. The way in which he and Nichola died is, as many have said, a tragedy that the whole House mourns.
The White Paper states:
The original SDR document said:
I wish to argue that, for that fundamental reason, the SDR was wrong to put all our eggs in the basket of an expeditionary approach, and that that approach, such as it is, is much too narrowly focused. At the end of my speech I shall touch briefly on the three horsemen galloping through the armed forces: budgetary cuts, the European security and defence identity and political correctness.
The White Paper makes much of Kosovo. It is too early to judge the success of the operation, although I share many of the concerns that some Labour Members, including the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon), have expressed about it. However, two aspects of the Kosovo operation are relevant to the future of our armed forces.
The first is that if Slobodan Milosevic had held out for another two or three weeks and we had had to go in, we would have been in dire straits. We would have had very quickly to persuade at least three of our major allies,
including America, to join us in that operation. Those who are aware of the delicate state of relations between the White House and Capitol Hill at that time will understand the considerable difficulties that that would have entailed. The French and Germans were also showing little enthusiasm.
For Britain, having to send in troops would have meant calling up between 15,000 and 25,000 reservists, many from units threatened with cuts or in the course of downsizing--a dreadful word--as a result of the outcome of the SDR. That hastily slung together force--originally designed for a different purpose as a peacekeeping force--would have been sent in with winter coming on within weeks for a task for which it was ill equipped. We were very lucky that Milosevic collapsed when he did.
That brings me to the second aspect, which is Russia's role. Whatever the balance of factors that led Milosevic to cave in, there is no doubt that Russian pressure was one of them. We miserably failed to acknowledge that. Indeed, had General Jackson obeyed his orders from Wesley Clark, we would have gone out of our way to humiliate the Russians.
I have been privileged to go to Russia twice in the past four years. During my visit last year with the Defence Committee, I was struck by how bitter and marginalised Russians across a range of political views feel. We have moved from Kosovo dominating television news to Chechnya dominating it. There is some truth in Russia's accusation against us of hypocrisy. Of course we are right to criticise some of what has happened in Chechnya, such as the barbaric looting of some civilian areas and villages long after any fighters have passed through and the treatment of some of the Chechen prisoners. However, at no point have I heard loud voices from the west acknowledging that, as the legitimate Government, the Russians were entitled to restore the rule of law in Chechnya, which was the greatest centre of the organised crime that now controls almost half the Russian economy.
Dr. Julian Lewis:
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Brazier:
I cannot because of the time constraint.
We killed 500 innocent civilians, which was a remarkably small number in the circumstances, in our bombing of Kosovo. When we criticise the Russians for the 30,000 civilians whom they have killed in Chechnya, let us remember that, while there have been many deaths that should not have occurred, they did not have the benefit of smart bombs and they had to fight in much more difficult territory--built-up areas that could not be overcome simply with air power.
Faced with blanket condemnation from the west, Russian foreign policy is moving into three grooves, all of which would be familiar to some extent to analysts from the 19th century. The first is a resurgent fear of the west. I supported the reunification of Germany, but the Russians can see NATO creeping towards them and they hear Mr. Prodi say, as he did in Latvia last week, that we should extend article 5 to members of the European Union. He said:
The second strand developing in Russian foreign policy is that it is looking for friends where it can. Even a year ago, analysts were openly talking at cocktail parties in Moscow about the fact that Russia was selling nuclear and other technologies of mass destruction to third world countries, most notably Iran. The third strand is that it has become clear that the one thing that distinguishes Chechnya from Kosovo and the western attitude towards Belgrade from the western attitude towards Moscow is that one country has nuclear weapons and the other does not. That has been noticed in Washington, where it is believed that 28 third-world countries will have a nuclear capability in the next five to 10 years.
I am proud to serve under the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), the Chairman of the Defence Committee. In his excellent speech to the Royal United Services Institute after the strategic defence review, he said that we had not yet seen a strategic security review, which would have
We should remember the Japanese subway bombing. A similar event could happen in our underground, involving thousands rather than dozens with the effective use of chemical weapons. For nearly 30 years, up to 18 battalion-sized units--we only have 40 infantry battalions in the regular Army and 15 in the Territorial Army--have been stationed in Northern Ireland. That should remind us of the dangers of a serious terrorist threat armed with weapons of mass destruction against this country. Yet the Government, for the first time, have offered the House estimates that specifically rule out defending the home base for the foreseeable future.
In America, 177 units of the National Guard have been formed with a specialist nuclear, biological and chemical monitoring role. Behind their 10 regular Army divisions, there are 13 National Guard divisions. Those divisions can be used for home defence, supplying the vast manpower-intensive effort involved in searching for terrorists. They can also be used--and this brings me to my secondary point about the shape of our expeditionary capability--to back the United States' expeditionary capability. At this very moment, the American sector in Bosnia is under the command of the National Guard's Black Horse Divisional Headquarters, from Texas.
National Guard and US Marine reserve units have also been used to huge effect in the Gulf and in subsequent operations, supplying tanks, artillery, fast jet fighters and engineers. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) on his comments on the Royal Auxiliary Air Force; we need some flying units to be formed, and then we will be in business.
Our armed forces are in danger of becoming great at fighting wars elsewhere, but unable to protect the home base. Also, however, our ability to sustain an operation at a distance is extremely weak, as to do so requires reserves of manpower, equipment and formed units. The European defence initiative is supposed to be sustainable for only a year, and that just about epitomises the muddle in the thinking that produced it.
Finally, I shall say a few words about the three horsemen that I mentioned at the outset. Much has been said about the figures that show the collapse in funding, but a few examples will show how bad the situation is. The programme of exercises has been greatly cut--inevitably--because of overstretch, but there was too little money left in the budget even to fund the few remaining high-intensity exercises that were planned.
I have spoken about the married quarters problem for 13 years, on and off, and the House has heard me with tolerance. A total of £11 million has been taken off the married quarters repair programme, so what message does that send to our armed forces families?
At a dinner in Chatham last week, I was told of one result of the pursuit of efficiency savings. The authorities there are unable to repair the gymnasium, with the result that only half of it is in operation. What does that say about the fitness of our soldiers?
the principles and conclusions of the Review--
the strategic defence review--
are proving as robust and well-founded as we expected them to be . . . the success of our forces in Kosovo
shows this. I shall argue that our experience in Kosovo and the equally important operation in Chechnya point to the opposite conclusion.
there is today no direct military threat to the United Kingdom or Western Europe. Nor do we foresee the re-emergence of such a threat.
That contrasts with a document published last year by the United States commission on national security, set up by the President with the support of Congress, which says:
America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not entirely protect us. . . States, terrorists, and other disaffected groups will acquire weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption, and some will use them. Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers.
What a contrast between the complacency of the SDR and the realism of the American approach.
Any attack or aggression against an EU member would be an attack or aggression against the whole EU.
What message does that send to Russia about the Baltic states joining the EU?
to address the problems of "asymmetric" threats: terrorism, possibly using crude chemical and biological weapons . . . the other weapons which the weak may choose to deploy against the strong.
He went on to point out:
SDR has not sufficiently addressed the problems of dealing with asymmetric threats
or the critical role that reserves should play.
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