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22 Jan 2003 : Column 382—continued
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his time.
5.29 pm
Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport): The guiding principle in foreign policy for centuries—indeed, it is associated with the treaty of Westphalia in 1648—has been respect for national borders and the concept of the nation state, but the viability of that model has been threatened and eroded with increasing speed in recent years.
In a speech at Reykjavik, the Prime Minister proposed the concept that, where events take place within the borders of a nation where people are being oppressed, tortured and murdered, it is appropriate to cross national borders to rectify the situation. He used that as an argument in favour of intervening in Kosovo. I am not at all sure about that concept, but I am certain that, where a realistic threat to the world and our own security comes from within a national border, crossing national borders can be justified.
With global communications increasing all the time, with media communications increasing so that messages, signals and pictures can be flashed around the world instantaneously and with transport links improving so that aircraft can travel half way round the world, missiles can travel enormous distances and weapons of mass destruction can threaten other countries from many thousands of miles of away, it sometimes becomes necessary to say that one cannot just respect national borders and that it is necessary to take action within them.
The threat of weapons of mass destruction is very considerable. One of the sub-committees of the political committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, of which I am a member, has been studying that subject in some depth in recent years. The threats of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons are very dangerous and frightening. The only reassuring factor is that weapons of mass destruction tend to be quite difficult to deliver.
World leaders cannot stand aside from that threat. In fact, there is one leader in the world: the United States, which, as we all know, now spends as much on defence as the next 14 countries put together. The United States takes its responsibilities profoundly seriously, so I would take issue with the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Llew Smith), whose speech preceded mine.
I know many Americans and have spent much time in America. I have great respect for that country, although it is a rather insular nation. Some 7 per cent. or 8 per cent. of the population of the United States have passports, and some Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives boast of not having a passport and not needing to travel outside its borders. Nevertheless, the United States is the world leader and it takes its responsibilities deeply seriously.
The United States was and remains shaken by the events of 11 September, the first major occasion on which terrorism was brought to American soil. They and we cannot allow Security Council resolutions to be ignored and flouted. They and we believe that action is necessary. Saddam Hussein must be made to comply. Although I recognise that it has been an extremely difficult path for the Prime Minister to follow, I respect what he and the Government are seeking to do.
My constituents will be thinking and praying for the men and women in the armed forces who are proceeding now to the middle east and those who may be sent there. We must hope that war does not become an inevitable
event—we must hope that it can be avoided—but we must use military threats if we are to achieve any progress.This debate is not on Iraq and the threat of war in the middle east, but on defence in the world. Of course, it succeeds the two-day debate on the defence estimates and the separate one-day debates on the Army, Navy and Air Force that we used to have. So although the threat of Iraq is overwhelmingly important, I would prefer to move off that subject and say a few words about the reserve forces—a completely different, but extremely important subject, on which I should like to put down a marker.
The 1998 strategic defence review announced a 3,000 increase in the size of the regular Army, but, because of recruitment and retention problems, the strength of the armed forces has decreased, making it much more important that we should have viable reserve forces of sufficient strength.
We need reserve forces for four reasons: first, as a framework for expansion in case it is necessary to expand our armed forces to cater for the unforeseen; secondly, to reinforce our regular forces during wartime or operations other than war, such as peacekeeping, either at home or overseas; thirdly, to provide aid to the civil community in times of emergency or natural disaster; and, fourthly and very importantly, to act as a link between the armed forces and the civil community.
The regular Army is dependent on the Territorial Army to complete its mobilised order of battle. The TA and the regular Army share a common doctrine; they operate within the same command structure; they have the same reliance on the regimental system; and they use the same equipment. But the Territorial Army is different. Many of its members are young. They are not all in full-time regular employment and can regularly and easily be deployed if necessary, but a significant cadre are much older and have secure peacetime employment, which makes it quite difficult to deploy them.
The Territorial Army should therefore be big enough to be deployed without calling on its members too frequently; we must ensure that we have a sufficient cadre of territorial solders to be deployed from time to time. The announced reduction by the Labour Government from 59,000 to 41,200 was too great. I maintain that 59,000, the number established by the previous Conservative Government, is approximately right. If we need that number of Territorial Army soldiers, we need it to be available at all times. We must remember that there is a 30 per cent. turnover, especially in the first year. In order to have 59,000 troops always available, we need approximately 78,000 to allow for depletion. Therefore, I urge that consideration be given to a significant increase in the Territorial Army, from its present level of about 40,000 to 70,000-plus.
The United Kingdom is now the only major country in the world with such a limited capacity to reconstitute its regular forces. The United States, which is about four times our size, has 10 regular army divisions, supported by the equivalent of 13 reserve divisions. Australia, which is about a third of our size, is planning a force structure based on two and a half regular brigades supported by five and a half territorial brigades. We are out of step with the rest of the world in having such thin
reserve forces capable of reconstituting our regular forces. I urge that consideration be given to a significant increase.Moreover, the strategic defence review identified the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, terrorism and drug-related crime, environmental damage and possible technological attack, perhaps through information technology, as significant threats to the nation. In all those areas the reserve forces, with their high degree of external experience and the ability to be called up if necessary, are ideal to take on those possible threats. Other countries do much more than we do in this area. The United States, as the Minister will well know, has taken considerable steps to prepare against nuclear, biological and chemical attack. The reserve forces should be used to prepare this nation similarly.
5.39 pm
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Highgate): In common with other hon. Members who have taken part in the debate, I pay tribute to the contribution of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), who, with no small eloquence, demolished the somewhat patronising attempt of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to dismiss opposition to a war in Iraq as being anti-American. I, like my hon. and learned Friend, am by no means anti-American. I can remember those care packages that came after the war, and I have always paid tribute to the Marshall plan. But I am most certainly opposed to the present American Administration.
The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed), who again I regret is not in his place, in a thoughtful contribution posed the question: is Saddam Hussein more of a danger now than he was before 11 September? The answer to that has to be no. I would argue that Saddam Hussein is no more of a real and present danger now than he was in 1998.
The argument that one sometimes hears that Saddam Hussein is hiding his weapons of mass destruction I find utterly unacceptable. The President of the United States has stated that he is personally tired of this game of hide and seek. If one accepts that Iraq has been overflown by American spy satellites year after year and probably hour on hour and that the aeroplanes that are engaged in the no-fly zone are exclusively fighters and, if one accepts that, as the Prime Minster has said, the flow of intelligence from Iraq is increasing, but that does not persuade one that that would furnish the UN inspectors with no small detailed information as to where they should look for these supposed weapons of destruction, I do not know quite what would.
The hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who, again I regret is not in his place, clearly spoke from direct experience of military action. He too asked some searching questions, not only how a war, if it goes ahead, would actively be conducted, but what would happen when the war was over. He asked whether we would, in effect, keep faith with the Iraqi people whom we have been urging to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
I well remember the encouragement that was furnished to the Iraqi opposition at the end of the Kuwait war by the then Prime Minister of this country, Margaret Thatcher, and the then President of the
United States, George Bush, urging and encouraging opposition by the Iraqi people. But support from the United Kingdom and the United States was conspicuous by its absence, and those people who had attempted to overturn their Government were slaughtered.The point I am attempting to make here is that the same kind of promises were made by the western nation states to Afghanistan. I entirely supported the military action in Afghanistan. I entirely supported what I understood at the time were firm promises on the part of the western nation states to assist Afghanistan to rebuild itself as a democratic society, but although those promises are only minutely being delivered with regard to Kabul, the wider area of Afghanistan is reverting to the state that it was in before. The opium is flourishing and being sold in probably greater amounts than ever before, the warlords are taking over and women are again being denied education and the opportunity to work.
A war against Iraq is totally and utterly unacceptable unless up-to-date, verifiable evidence can be presented that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and the means of and intent to deliver them, and unless there is a second mandate from the UN endorsing military action. If war takes place, it will undoubtedly be won by what many hon. Members have defined as the most powerful nation in the world; it will be a war which in the first instance will be conducted by, I imagine, saturation bombing from the air, where the victims will not be Saddam Hussein and his Government but, again, the innocent. I do not believe Saddam Hussein's protestations that he will stay and fight with his people; that he will repel the Mongol horde. I believe that he will go. Equally, I do not believe that having won the war we, the United Kingdom and the United States, will be prepared to commit the money, people, material and time to create a new democratic society in Iraq.
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