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Mr. David Kidney (Stafford): I share my hon. Friend's pleasure that not too many civilians died in Iraq, but I am finding it extremely difficult to ascertain exactly how many did die there. Does he have any accurate statistics?
Mr. Smith: The sad fact is that we do not know, and we are unlikely to find, a definite figure, but it is certainly nothing like the predictions of hundreds of thousands of deaths that were bandied around at the time. I realise that it is a dangerous argument to talk about balancing 1,000 against 100,000 deaths, but I believe that a badly equipped and trained army is a dangerous army. Being properly equipped and trained makes our army one of the best. However, there is still a long way to go.
Having paid tribute to the Government's defence policy, I want to deal with a couple of other issues. We have already touched on recruitment and retention
levels in the services generally, and there is a problem there. We have to be careful because the nature of war is changing dramatically. The idea of having large numbers of infantry battalions is an old concept. What we need is the right number of people doing the right job in the right place with the right equipment. Frankly, that is not just a numbers game. Having worked in the services, I recognise that every commanding officer will argue that it is all about numbers and nothing else, but we have to deliver the right people.It is already difficult, but it gets even harder when we have a tight labour market. Recruiting in our inner cities is becoming more difficult, but the best place to recruit—historically and today—is precisely in our inner cities and in our less favoured areas. I happen to believe that joining the services—I would recommend it to anyone—provides an opportunity for youngsters who otherwise might not have one. It is a wonderful opportunity for a second chance for those who have not succeeded in school or elsewhere, and it gives them an ability to get on in life. However, ethnic minorities do not get the chance that they should get. Since 1997, we have had a good record on our targets for recruiting ethnic minorities. In a previous speech, I said that it was not good enough, and it still is not. The proportion of ethnic minorities in the armed forces should not reflect the proportion of ethnic minorities in this country: it should be double or even treble, as it is in the United States. That is because many people in that group suffer the worst deprivation and live in some of the most run-down inner-city areas in this country.
In a previous speech, I asked whether it was conceivable that General Colin Powell, the first black man to become the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, could have ever become Chief of the Defence Staff in this country. Someone contacted me after that speech and reminded me that General Powell had commented on that very issue. When he went to Buckingham palace to receive his honorary knighthood, he pointed out that if his father had chosen to emigrate to Britain rather than to New York, his son would have been lucky to become a sergeant-major in the British Army. That is not meant as a condemnation of our forces, because they have done a marvellous job. The Welsh Guards attended the Butetown carnival this year, in the middle of the mardi gras, recruiting young black men and women from the docks in Tiger Bay in Cardiff. More can be done to build on the success of the last few years to improve the recruitment of ethnic minorities. That will help us to meet the capability gap in recruiting, personnel and training, so that our forces can continue to do the splendid job that they do.
I recently had the privilege of visiting Ascension island, the airhead for the Falklands. As ever, we were welcomed by Squadron Leader Mark Pattinson and the other 25 military personnel on the base. We arrived late on a Friday afternoon and they all turned out to give us a warm reception and an excellent briefing before we flew back to this country. They are a splendid example of why our forces are so good.
An important part of general defence policy has to be our defence industrial policy, although I do not wish to stray on to the subject matter of next week's defence procurement debate. The Government have made a good start by publishing the policy document, which has been well received by industry and most defence
pundits. Of course, it is one thing to produce a good policy, but another to ensure that it works in practice. We need a balanced approach. We should not promote competition and the private sector for their own sake, because they will always be cheaper and more efficient. They need to be balanced against crucial military considerations such as efficiency, reliability, surge capacity and benchmarking.My only request to the Minister is that he consider carefully how that policy should be applied to the Defence Aviation Repair Agency, which was created four years ago to balance the need to provide the benefits of the imperatives of the commercial sector against the need to prevent monopoly, to provide benchmarking for prices in the industry and a surge capacity in moments of crisis and conflict, such as in Iraq recently. I am confident that if he applies his own policy to the agency that he created so few years ago, the future of DARA, especially in my constituency—and the construction of the £90 million hangar, which will benefit the whole Welsh economy—will remain on course and deliver the benefits that our military services deserve.
Finally, I emphasise the point made by every hon. Member so far and pay tribute to the outstanding work that our servicemen and women do throughout the world.
3.24 pm
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith), who speaks with such knowledge and passion about all defence subjects—although on this occasion I disagreed with two or three of his conclusions. I certainly endorse his tribute to our armed services throughout the nation and the fantastic job that they have done over the past five years. It is a tribute well worth paying, given that 46,000 of our troops and 25,000 vehicles were delivered to approximately the right place in Iraq with approximately the right equipment. That contrasted starkly with the performance of certain others in the same theatre of war, although I mean no discourtesy to them. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, however, that that was necessarily a result of the strategic defence review. Indeed, I think it may be the other way around—I think it may have happened despite the Government's failure to fund the SDR.
Nor am I certain that the hon. Gentleman is right in saying that European security and defence policy will necessarily lead, somehow or other, to an increase in European defence spending. The evidence so far suggests that moves towards ESDP have led to a reduction in spending. I am sure that the Americans, Conservative Members and everyone else who may be listening would be only too delighted if the European nations said "Fine: we will have ESDP tomorrow, we will have a European army, and we will spend 3 or 4 per cent. of gross domestic product on defence". Europe would then be able to defend herself, which would be great—but no one in this or any other European country has ever come close to suggesting that it would be the case. The truth is that we depend on the United States and NATO for the safe defence of Europe and of this country. That will always be so, and I for one welcome the fact.
I agreed with much of what the Secretary of State said. As he rightly observed, the nature of warfare moves forward all the time and all kinds of new challenges lie ahead. Asymmetrical warfare and dealing with terrorism, for instance, demand a different approach from what was required of us during the cold war.
Incidentally, the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan—who I fear has now left the Chamber—was talking complete nonsense when he attacked us for reducing our defence spending towards the end of the 1980s. He had obviously forgotten the fall of the Berlin wall and the peace dividend, as it was always called, and he could not have read any of the reports—he was not a Member of Parliament at the time—of how bitterly the Labour party attacked the Government for not making far deeper cuts. Had Labour been in power at the time of the fall of the Berlin wall, we would have no kind of defence capability left, for Labour was still in thrall to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. We would certainly have seen far deeper cuts had Labour been in power.
It was refreshing to hear the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Llew Smith) talk in a good, old-fashioned, pacifist, CND sort of way. He would have been entirely at home in the Chamber during 1986, 1987 and 1988, before the fall of the Berlin wall. He and the Labour party would then have been wholly in agreement, although now his is more or less a lone voice on the Labour Benches. I look forward to the speech of the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), whose views I suspect may be similar to those of his Celtic friend across the Chamber.
As I have said, I broadly welcomed what the Secretary of State had to say about the change in warfare. I look forward to seeing the White Paper, which I hope will be published in the not-too-distant future—before Christmas, I trust. It will be interesting to see what it contains. The rumours that have circulated in the defence community so far have been worrying, to say the least. One also suspects, given the Secretary of State's body language, that—notwithstanding all the new Labour talk and all his clever expressions about making best use of our defence capabilities and resources—what he actually meant was that he was required to give the Chancellor of the Exchequer a jolly big whack of cash, and that it had been his job to try to find a way of cutting our defence capabilities in order to do that.
In an intervention I challenged the Secretary of State to tell me if that was incorrect, and this was not about defence cuts. I challenged him to say that we would have the same or greater capabilities next year, the year after that and—if Labour was still in power, which I very much hope it will not be—in five years' time, which he signally failed to do. He would not give us any guarantee about future British defence capabilities. I fear that when the White Paper is published it will be full of clever-sounding new Labour expressions, rather like the SDR. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) pointed out, in new Labour speak somehow or other less means more. The Government will spin in an attempt to demonstrate that although they are closing three infantry battalions and cutting one tank regiment, and are to reduce the size of the aircraft carriers, Britain should not worry about all
those deep cuts. They will say "Don't worry about it, Britain. Your defence is safe in Labour's hands. We are saving loads and loads of money by cutting the number of soldiers, planes and ships. Do not worry about it—defence is actually better." I suspect that that is the sort of language that will appear in the White Paper. If I am wrong, I challenge the Minister of State to correct me when he winds up. I hope that he does not resort to clever new Labour spin to conceal the fact that the Government intend to make deep cuts in defence when the White Paper is published.My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex spoke very well about defence policy in general, so I shall deal with three specific matters. I suspect that the tension between capability and resources currently faced by the MOD will be highlighted in respect of each. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that the first matter is the announcement that the C130J fleet is to be moved from RAF Lyneham in my constituency to RAF Brize Norton. If all goes according to plan, RAF Lyneham will close by 2012.
The Minister has often acknowledged that the plan is extremely bad news for my constituents. It will mean that 750 directly employed jobs will be lost, and that a significantly larger number—in local schools, shops and other enterprises that support the base—will also go. In addition, 2,500 RAF jobs will be lost—a matter that we have not faced up to yet. There will be a hole in the local north Wiltshire economy worth £75 million, which will be very significant for my constituency.
The Minister is aware of all that. I suppose that he would be justified in arguing that the effect on the local economy is not his primary concern, which is to ensure that the defence of the realm is in place. To some extent, I would accept that. I welcome the fact that the Minister and the MOD have agreed to work with me and the local task force that I have set up to counterbalance the worst effects of the closure. I am grateful also for the fact that civil servants are now working with us, but I should like to make a couple of pleas in that regard.
First, will the Minister ensure that if surveys of, for example, the contaminated land on the base are needed, the MOD will be prepared to go the extra mile to assist the task force in the work that it has to do? Secondly, will he ensure that the transfer, when it happens, will be swift and clean? We do not want RAF Lyneham to be left derelict or semi-derelict for a period of years, during which it could become a run-down mess.
The base may become non-viable before 2012. If only a small number of C130K planes are left on the base, it is possible that it may cease to be viable by 2009 or 2010. We should much prefer the matter to be clean cut, with the RAF leaving cleanly so that new civilian businesses and houses can come on to the base. An extended run-down happened elsewhere in my area, at the Corsham base, which was left derelict for a long time after the military moved out. I hope that the Minister will keep an eye on that in the years to come.
As an aside, I hope that the Minister will no longer be in post when RAF Lyneham closes. That is a purely political sentiment—on a personal level, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will continue his work, but, on a political level, I hope to be doing his job by then. If that
is the case, I shall certainly heed the request that I am making this afternoon. If I am not in his job when RAF Lyneham closes, I hope that he and his successors will do all that they can to facilitate the base's transfer to civilian use.My second point is that the Government seem to be concentrating all the RAF's air transport and refuelling capability—as well as most of its passenger capability—at RAF Brize Norton. They are putting all their transport eggs in one basket, in a very big way. If I were a terrorist, or belonged to a nation that hated Britain, RAF Brize Norton would be the first place that I would bomb and try to close down. That would ruin Britain's entire defence capability at a stroke. RAF Lyneham was red hot during Operation Telic. Planes were coming in and out all the time. The fact that the base had two runways was useful on at least one occasion—when one is blocked by a broken down aeroplane the other can be used. We were using RAF Brize Norton at the same time. If all those capabilities were based in one place—at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire—there would be a real risk of it being hit in some way, severely depleting our capability as a result. Leaving aside my constituency interest, the Minister should give further thought to the strategic downside of basing all our transport capabilities at Brize Norton.
My second concern is entirely unrelated but it is a matter that is close to my heart. I was in the Territorial Army for seven years. I remain a member of the Court of Assistants of the Honourable Artillery Company—25 of its soldiers were deployed in Operation Telic. Thanks to my membership of the armed forces parliamentary scheme and my current membership of the Royal College of Defence Studies, I was pleased to spend a week in Iraq in May. During that time I met a great many Territorial Army soldiers. I wish to raise a number of matters relating to the TA and reserve forces, in particular with regard to their usefulness in Operation Telic and other future mobilisations.
The whole Iraq operation could not have happened without the Territorial Army. That should be made plain and it is contrary to what was said in the strategic defence review. I think that a total of 8,800 reservists of one sort or another are serving in the Gulf. At one stage, about 25 per cent. of ground troops were from the TA. They brought a large number of specific skills to the war effort—skills that could not have come from the Regular Army. I am thinking in particular of the Port and Maritime Regiment, which was deployed first in Southampton Marchwood. The regiment was responsible for all the 25,000 vehicles that were loaded. Then, it was moved to Um Qasr in Iraq and was responsible for those vehicles being unloaded, deployed in the field and brought out again. That port and maritime operation was carried out by a TA regiment that was called up on Christmas day, if I remember rightly, and was being used until the other day when the troops were finally demobilised.
The same applies to a significant degree to the Royal Army Medical Corps. A significant number of the medics were national health service doctors and nurses. The operation could not have been carried out without them. The Royal Logistics Corps and the Signals also relied significantly on the TA. There were lots of other teeth arm people out there—infantry people and special
forces—and all of them were from the TA. I am sure that the Minister will be the first to acknowledge the superb effort that members of the TA made.I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne), who is serving as a major in the Territorial Army in Iraq and my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison), who is serving with the medical services there. It is remarkable that two Members of this House and two members of staff, I think, are serving in the Gulf.
Looking forward, it is one thing to have the compulsory mobilisation of that number of TA soldiers to fight a war—that is broadly acceptable to families and employers—but what is slightly more worrying is the compulsory mobilisation under the Reserve Forces Act 1996 that is now taking place and is apparently likely to continue for many years to come. People are being sent compulsorily from this country—whether they want to go or not—to serve in Iraq in peace-building operations of one sort or another. I shall be interested to know the Minister's reaction to that. Sooner or later, I think that that will become less acceptable than compulsory mobilisation for fighting a war.
The Regular Army expects to go to places such as Iraq to undertake peacekeeping operations, build infrastructure and so forth. A stockbroker does not expect to be called up compulsorily to go to Iraq six or 12 months after the war to patrol and be on guard, or even to relieve Regular Army counterparts. I suspect that there will be a difficulty with retention and recruitment in the TA if such mobilisations go on indefinitely. It would be interesting to hear the Minister's view on what can be done to avoid that.
I have several questions about pay and conditions. I think I am right in saying that, under the Reserve Forces Act 1996, once someone has been compulsorily mobilised for a six-month period, they cannot be remobilised for another three years. If that is so, now that so much of the Territorial Army has been mobilised what on earth will we do if another Iraq arises next year or the year after and it is still three years before we can replenish our reserves?
What can we do about the attitude of employers? Later this year, it will be compulsory for employers to know when their employees are members of the TA, which I broadly welcome. One could argue—I often do—that people should not join the TA unless they are prepared to serve. That is only fair and it is right that employers should know. However, I fear that some employers will say, "Well, if you're in the Territorial Army, I'm not going to employ you." Some private sector employers might have some reason for doing that, but even more worrying is the fact that several public sector employers have adopted that position. I am told that both the Leicestershire and the Cambridgeshire fire authorities have said that no firemen may be in the TA. That seems bizarre. Similarly, two or three police forces have said that no policeman may be in the TA. The Government should make it plain to public sector bodies that if they are in receipt of public money, they should employ members of the TA and other reserve services. Perhaps the Minister could do something about that.
I have come across several soldiers who suffered problems after compulsory mobilisation due to the pay structure. Members of the TA receive the same pay as
the equivalent rank in the Regular Army. Incidentally, I apologise to the Air Force and the Royal Navy, I am including all three services; I use "TA" as shorthand because I served in it. However, if soldiers can demonstrate hardship—for example, that the amount of money that they are receiving from the Army, Navy or Air Force is less than they need to pay their mortgage and normal outgoings—they are given a hardship payment to make up the difference.The difficulty lies in the necessity to demonstrate to the authorities that one is suffering hardship. Almost all the TA soldiers who were called up had to do that. They had to produce bankers' orders to prove that they were paying their mortgage so that their pay could be made up to a level that would prevent their families from suffering hardship. There were benefits for those who could see what was coming and had converted their credit card payments, for which they were not paid by the Army, into bankers' orders, but not for those who were unprepared. That is wrong.
If members of the Territorial Army and other services are to be compulsorily mobilised their pay should be commensurate with their civilian pay. They are being taken away from civilian life, where they have family commitments and houses, and receive quite different rates of pay that do not allow them to keep up their way of life. Reserve forces' pay should be linked to civilian pay, although there should be some form of capping. It would be unacceptable for a stockbroker giving up a £150,000 job to be a private soldier to receive the same rate of pay. However, there should be some broad link, without the intrusive pay inquiries that went on during the run-up to Operation Telic, and without too much examination of people's bank statements, so that their way of life can continue as it did before their call-up.
The House will be aware of reports such as the one in The Daily Telegraph on 29 May, headlined:
- "TA faces mass fall-out in Gulf pay bungle".
The figure may be incorrect and I should be happy to have the Minister's assurance that he is confident that both retention and recruitment in the reserve forces will continue at their current levels. However, the RAMC in my area—Wessex—reports significant departures. NHS personnel in the RAMC are saying, "I'm not having this. I'm not going to be called up compulsorily and kept out there for unreasonably long periods and paid less than I would be as a consultant at my local hospital. I am not going to do it. My wife won't let me do it. I am very sorry but I am going to leave the Territorial Army." If the Minister disagrees, he must say so and let us know what he intends to do about it to ensure that retention and recruitment in the TA and the other services is kept up. I suspect that part of that may involve linking their pay to civilian pay. Incidentally, there is one other thing that he could do about that—we ought to have a mobilisation day.
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