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5.38 pm
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr. Adam Ingram): I thank all hon. Members for their contributions. The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) did himself a disservice when he said that he used to send people to sleep. He did not send me to sleep because he quoted so extensively from that wonderful piece that the Secretary of State delivered. It kept me
awake, as it did the first time that I heard and read it. It is worth revisiting and the hon. Gentleman was right to alight on it because it makes important points, on which I shall elaborate.In setting our defence policy, we are conscious that its terms will shape not only the type of operations that we plan to be able to mount but the scope and nature of our procurement programmes far into an uncertain future. Our policy has a significant effect in declaring where and how we plan to operate and exert our influence in the world. It also declares to our allies and adversaries our assessment of the circumstances in which we will operate alone, with NATO, in an ESDP structure or in coalitions of the willing, and the scale of those commitments.
It is critical that our defence policy is based on a rigorous assessment of the nature of the risks that we face, and that it suggests how they may develop in time. Those judgments focus our attention on organisations or nations that are likely to pose the greatest risk to our interests, now and in future.
All that gives us a clear picture of the capabilities needed to match and defeat the challenges ahead, but I need not remind the House that defence capability has two components. One is matériel; the other involves the men and women who serve our country with such distinction. The people we need, and the training that they require to deliver the necessary capability, are changing. In particular, the expeditionary nature of operations and the increasing technological complexity of military equipment are placing unprecedented demands on our people. We owe it to them to ensure that our evolving requirements are adequately reflected in what we believe to be a far-sighted and coherent defence policy that will sustain the vitality, professionalism, skill and reputation of our servicemen and women. As many hon. Members have pointed out, getting that right cannot be regarded as a simple science.
Events have shown that we should not ignore the probability of the unexpected. Accordingly, our defence policy must be alert and responsive to the shocks and crossroads in international affairs that we might encounter. Of necessity, therefore, planning horizons are more ambitious, and while they must be based, in part, on experience, they must also accommodate a greater degree of uncertainty than was the norm in the closing decades of the last millennium. That means that we must always be prepared to re-evaluate our perceptions and predictions.
The fact that the broad direction of the strategic defence review, in terms of deployability, mobility and expeditionary warfare, was the right one has been borne out by events. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) spoke graphically and forcefully on that subject. The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) made similar points. I notice that he is double-hatting in this debate. One minute he is on the Front Bench, the next he is on the Back Benches, and now he is on the Front Bench again.
Mr. Gerald Howarth: He is multi-skilled.
Mr. Ingram: He may be multi-skilled, but he has been very well trained, leaving aside some of the lectures that he may have had to listen to in the past.
The SDR new chapter provided the new focus of our response to the emerging threat of international terrorism. It built on the solid foundation of earlier work, and added emphasis to a rapidly evolving understanding of our security environment. The defence choices over the coming months will further shape the ability of our armed forces to meet the tasks that we will set in future. Those tasks change as the world around us changes. The greatest challenge that we now face is to predict and adapt to those changes quickly and effectively.
The greatest risk that we face is that of failing to make a judicious assessment of the evolving need and, worse still, failing to enable our armed forces to make the required changes in configuration, equipment, and personnel policy. The Government have a responsibility to assess the challenges, and to enable the changes that will underwrite our defence in the future. This debate has reminded us, as every defence debate does, that our armed forces continue to be heavily engaged in the world, and the probability must be that this will not change in the near future.
The majority of hon. Members have, as I would have hoped, taken the opportunity of today's debate to raise issues that bear upon some of the areas that I have just mentioned. I would like to deal with those points now. One of the central charges made by the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) was that we have too many commitments and too few resources. I think that that sums up a major part of his contribution. What he did not say, however, was which commitments we should not have undertaken. [Interruption.] If people make the charge that we have too many commitments, they must face up to the responsibility of saying, "Not now. We cannot do this." In saying that we have too few resources, he should not do as he did at the Conservative party conference when he talked about "enough boots", "enough ships" and "enough aircraft". He should define what "enough" means, and tell us what our shortfall is. That is the way in which the Government can realistically be held to account. He should give us not some generalised statement of what could be good—a motherhood and apple pie philosophy—but a specific analysis and a specific commitment on those points.
On the hon. Gentleman's point about over-commitment, should we not have made a contribution in Sierra Leone, the Balkans, Afghanistan or Iraq? The Conservatives had very strong views on Iraq. Indeed, they were saying that we should make a commitment in Iraq before we had even come to a conclusion on that issue. The resource pressures were there at that point in time. Now Conservative Members say that there is insufficiency of resources. They were arguing for the commitments. They have to take that on board.
Another issue that the hon. Gentleman raised related to training. He referred to the July publication of the director of operational capability report. An earlier report was published in February. Both those reports were commissioned at my request. I asked the DOC to undertake the studies, and we made a conscious decision to publicise all the things that we discovered during that assessment, which was very much an in-depth assessment of the initial training regime, which perhaps had not been studied comprehensively, if at all, for many years. Clearly, that was required.
The important aspect was that it identified key areas for improvement. Significantly, 42 out of the 60 actions that were identified have now been acted upon. I visited one of our major training establishments the other week to see what was happening. I met a lot of new instructors. Everyone told me what a wonderful change there had been in the culture, ethos, approach and the way in which training was handled. They knew that there was more to come and that there were probably better ways of doing it. I had to point out to them that we were at the beginning of the implementation of that assessment but that the important aspect was that there was commitment in that training regime.
When I hear criticism of our training regime, I simply reflect on how many thousands have been put through that regime—tens of thousands over the past few years. We could not deliver in all those conflicts to the extent that we have if that machine were broken and failing the armed forces, in this case the Army. I say to hon. Members, when they make their central charge that there is something flawed in our initial training structures, that we could not be successful if that were the case. That does not mean that things cannot be improved. That is why I commissioned the DOC report and why we will continue to look for ways to implement it.
The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) commented on the Territorial Army and the reserves issue. In an intervention, I set out the reason for the reduction of 2,000 about which we saw lurid headlines. The media did not come and ask us. They could have got a proper explanation but, sadly, they are more interested in lurid headlines, and others then take up the charge without saying to the MOD, "Give us the facts." I hope that the fact that I gave helps—I am sure that it helped the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Member for North Essex raised the matter, too but did not hear the explanation that was given.
There is another interesting aspect. Again, if the TA were beginning to disintegrate because there was too much pressure on it, too many demands were made of it, or there were some fault lines in all this, we would begin to see a major problem in retention and recruitment. We are not seeing that. Over time, we have to study that but we are not seeing it at this point.
Interestingly, 9 per cent. of the deployed Army reserves have applied to join the regular forces. I hear that the TA is fragile and beginning to disintegrate but TA members have now realised what a contribution they can make by committing themselves in a regular way. That is an indicator of strength, not weakness.
I had the privilege of being in Ukraine recently, where 4 Para, a TA regiment, was training alongside our Polish and Ukrainian friends. Some of them had just come out of Iraq, but where did they want to go? Back to Iraq. I was surprised. There were professional people there. There was a joiner, a plumber, people who could earn substantial money in the private sector, but they wanted to commit themselves in that way, so it is not all doom and gloom. I do not believe even for one moment that there is a weakness in the way in which the TA is currently responding to the demands that are placed on it. Again, we will have to assess that over time.
The hon. Member for North Essex asked about the cost of Operation Telic. I do not know how many parliamentary questions I have answered on that but the
current net cost is running at £700 million against a predicted budget of £1 billion. Further costs for the year 2002–03 are currently being assessed, and will of course be published in due course. We have made it clear that we are committed to achieving our objectives in Iraq, and the budget and financial support is important in that regard.I turn to the points made by the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed). Other Members have said that he may have been elevated in the recent reshuffle—[Interruption.] He is shaking his head. I pass on my best wishes to his predecessor, the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch), who will obviously be back on the Front Bench at some point. The hon. Member for South-East Cornwall raised at least two important points, the first of which concerned pensions. Although the issue of pensions does not relate strictly to defence policy, I can see how a connection could be made. The accusation is that we are cutting pensions, but the service pension has not been reduced—it will still be worth 50 per cent. after 35 years, with a tax-free lump sum of three times the pension. Personnel will also have scope to accrue further benefits if they serve for longer.
It is true that we will no longer provide an early immediate pension, as this would not be consistent with the expected Inland Revenue policy of not allowing pension benefits to be paid before the age of 55. We have to position ourselves in terms of future policy—otherwise, we will have to revisit this issue—and that is the sensible approach to take. However, we do intend to provide a replacement early departure scheme, which will offer similar benefits and structure, and provide support until the preserved pension and tax-free lump sum are paid out at the age of 65. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for South-East Cornwall looks perplexed, but before charging us with cutting pensions, he should read the written statement produced by one of my colleagues on 15 September, which dealt with some of those points.
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