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Mr. Spellar indicated dissent.
Mr. Hancock: The Minister shakes his head, but hon. Members should read Hansard tomorrow. That is not borne out by the evidence of people who spoke to aircrews who went to Kosovo. They did not fly modified Tornados with smart weapons on them in missions in Kosovo. If the Minister wants to intervene, I shall willingly give way.
Legions of times, disinformation has been the order of the day. The arguments over the rifle were ludicrous. The Conservatives cannot opt out of their responsibility for that. The issues surrounding the Eurofighter must still be causing great alarm in the MOD, given the overruns and delays on that project. Whether the plane will achieve what we expected as a military weapon is debatable.
Many hon. Members referred to individual procurement projects in which the MOD has been involved. I should like to raise the issue of the Charm project: a weapon that the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire (Mr. Graham), who spoke about Bishopton, would be keenly interested in, as are my constituents who work at Portsmouth Aviation, given the shabby way in which they have been treated. I still await with interest the response to questions that I have tabled.
The Minister failed to answer questions about training and exercises, either when he was challenged at the Dispatch Box or during his presentation. In the past 12 months, eight naval exercises, 20 army exercises and 12 RAF exercises have been cancelled. The Royal Marines deployment of 800 men to Norway to get much needed training has once again been abandoned.
No one has mentioned the two new aircraft carriers. We are led to believe that the JSF multi-role fighter will not be produced in the form first suggested. That will considerably change the design of the two carriers.
Some hon. Members may be more concerned about the names of those carriers and where they are to be based--I make a plea for Portsmouth--but I believe that the important thing is to discover whether the MOD still intend to deliver on those two carriers for the Royal Navy. What type of planes will fly from them? If we are to believe the Americans, planes will have to have a range of at least 500 miles if they are to defend a carrier properly. What type of carrier are we going to produce, and what will that do to the budget?
The problem of morale will not be satisfactorily resolved. I accept entirely that much is being done in the MOD, but the real issue is how all this will be paid for. I was delighted that more is being done for family welfare, and I share the Minister's conviction in that regard. However, there is more to be done. Married quarters need to be upgraded, despite the fact that tens of millions of pounds are to be spent. The Government have been told that they need to spend hundreds of millions to bring that stock up to the required standard.
Ms Rachel Squire (Dunfermline, West):
I echo the tributes paid to Michael Colvin, who was truly a gallant and honourable gentleman. I also express my deep sympathy to his family, and that of his wife.
Let me begin with people, and echo the tributes that have been paid to our armed forces. As the first line of the White Paper says,
As the White Paper rightly says, the quality of our people is the single most important component of Britain's defence capability. Those people give us the critical edge that leads to success. I welcome the measures included in the policy for people: they must remain a priority, as the White Paper recognises. That is certainly the view of the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Charles Guthrie, who recently gave a presentation to the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies. It is published in this month's edition of the institute's journal. The general said:
I also want to comment on defence support. I welcome the efforts that have been made to make smart procurement just that: smart, efficient and rapid. I am well aware that things were hardly efficient under the last
Government, but I would not say that everything is perfect now. In my constituency, Rosyth dockyard has not been pleased by the delay in the decision on the Sonar 2087. Hon. Members will not be surprised that I will not allow a defence debate to end without paying tribute to the dockyard, to HMS Caledonia, to DERA Rosyth and to all the personnel involved, who are trying to give service to their country.
Mr. Blunt:
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Ms Squire:
I am sorry, but I must decline, because I know that at least one other hon. Member wishes to speak.
The White Paper also deals with NATO and European defence. In the same presentation and article, entitled "Bringing the Armed Forces into a New Millennium", the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Charles Guthrie, said:
Finally, I want to refer to the chapter of the White Paper that refers to a safer world. It focuses on some of the issues raised by Kosovo in relation to our strategy for the future. I look forward to a full debate on Kosovo, and the issues and lessons that it raises, when the report of the Select Committee on Defence is published, so I shall touch on only one or two points now.
The White Paper says that we should consider how we deal with the "asymmetric warfare" engaged in by adversaries who cannot compete in conventional warfare, and makes it clear that Slobodan Milosevic is a perpetrator of that form of defence. I give my full support to the whole area of defence diplomacy, particularly the outreach programme with Russia. Without going into detailed comments on some of our concerns about human rights abuses in Chechnya, all of us would agree that the Russian armed forces have been poorly trained and poorly treated for many years. It is in all our interests to try to improve that.
Again, I hope that we can have a fuller and specific debate on the whole area of international peacekeeping: the importance of humanitarian efforts, what should be done by the military and what should be done by civilian personnel. The problems in Mitrovica highlight and underline that well. I quote General Sir Michael Jackson, who in a recent journal highlighted the different roles that our soldiers are expected to play. He said:
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome):
The previous time I spoke in a defence debate, the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) accused me of having been got at by the Fleet Air Arm, and I happily admit that I had been, as Yeovilton is in my constituency. Since then, I have been got at by the entire Navy. I have been a member of the armed forces parliamentary scheme and have spent a year being got at, from the First Sea Lord to the newest recruit. Therefore, I will unashamedly speak about the Royal Navy today, although briefly, I hope.
The Defence White Paper carries us very little forward from the strategic defence review, but it has reinforced the primacy of the navy's role in carrying forward the expeditionary policy, the platform for power projection, which the navy essentially provides for our armed forces. I was happy to have the opportunity to go to the eastern Mediterranean to watch and to join in amphibious operations during the summer on HMS Ocean and HMS Fearless. Indeed, it almost felt like home from home. I think that I met more of my constituents on HMS Ocean, on which 40 Commando was embarked, than I would normally in a surgery. That was in marked contrast to the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter), who accompanied me. He did not manage to find one constituent on the whole thing and thought that it was a set-up.
That reinforced the essential element of projection, which HMS Ocean as a ship and the amphibious task group could provide. It also reinforced the great danger that the MOD faces of being scuppered by the Treasury. The MOD's capital plans, which are encapsulated in the White Paper, may not come to pass. It is essential to have HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion, which we will have, I believe, but it is equally essential to have the two new aircraft carriers. Undoubtedly, the Treasury is the greatest threat to those carriers.
I believe that, soon, the Ministry of Defence will be considering commissioning a second HMS Ocean, because the indispensability of that very important asset will very quickly be recognised. While I was on HMS Ocean, a standard joke was that there was no prospect of it coming back to Britain for Christmas, because it would never be more than a day's sailing from Podgorica. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) would have been disappointed if I had not mentioned Montenegro at least once the debate.
Nevertheless, we shall have to come to terms with the aspirations and ambitions of politicians, in the form of the Prime Minister and Ministers at the Ministry of Defence and at the Foreign Office, and with the capital that is available to us. Subsequently--if we are to do effectively the jobs that we want to do--some pretty important decisions will have to be taken, for example, on carrier-borne aircraft, which was mentioned earlier in the debate, and on the marinisation of an attack helicopter.
I should like also to deal briefly with the armed services' humanitarian role--which was dealt with earlier today, in the statement on Mozambique. I believe that we
will increasingly be asking our armed forces to perform such a role, which is not a replacement for their primary role--to fight. A warship should not be put in jeopardy because it is carrying humanitarian supplies. Nevertheless, could we not do more to equip the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, including the RFA Fort George and the RFA Fort Victoria, with a better range of humanitarian supplies, to be included in their standard inventory and used in an emergency?
I also had the opportunity to visit Northern Ireland, to see the work that the Navy is doing there. I have only one question on that work, as I do not want to get involved in a discussion on the appropriate level of military strength in Northern Ireland. I know that serious consideration is being given to the future of the Northern Ireland patrol. If those ships--such as HMS Dulverton, which I had the pleasure of visiting--were not there, patrolling the area between the Carlingford Lough and Belfast and giving their assistance to the civil authorities in the Celtic sea, with what would they be replaced? Would they be replaced by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, by Customs and Excise, or by some other body? I do not think that it is possible to replace them.
I should like to take one very brief moment to mention a parochial issue, on which the Minister will not be able to give me a reply. Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton is very important to my constituency. I have failed to argue successfully for Joint Force 2000 to be based there, and failed to argue successfully for the Joint Helicopter Command to be based there. There has been investment in buildings there, but that is always worrying in the context of the Ministry of Defence, as we do not know what will happen next.
Britain's Armed Forces are among the best in the world.
They do us proud. I also want to mention the service families who, time and again, have demonstrated their commitment and support through thick and thin, especially during the past 12 months.
expectations have been raised and if we do not deliver on people issues we will never again enjoy the credibility of the average Serviceman and woman. This is my number one priority, as without our people we are nothing.
That says it all.
There is an argument that a strong, more assertive Europe will undermine NATO. I think that is wrong. A Europe that remains allied to the US simply because of its own weaknesses is of limited value. Europe's weakness to provide for its own security interests is more damaging to the transatlantic relationship than an strong Europe with the greater influence in decision making that would go with a greater military contribution to the Alliance.
That puts the case brilliantly, as we would expect from our Chief of the Defence Staff.
We have soldiers living in Serb apartments where they are isolated. We have permanent guards in all Orthodox churches and monasteries without which they would be burnt and bombed. We even escort little old ladies to the bread shop to buy their bread, but on the way a Kosovar Albanian teenager will give the sign of throat-slitting to her face. In terms of what outside intervention in the sense of soldiers, and policemen and civil administrators can achieve, what this tells me is that there is a limit: we're talking about people's attitudes, people's perceptions.
He sums up clearly some of the conflicts in peacekeeping efforts, but also how right we are to be proud of our armed forces. I again pay tribute to them. It gives pleasure to us
all to see them putting their lives at risk to try to give life, safety and hope to civilian communities throughout the world.
9.22 pm
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