21:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 210 / Noes: 294 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Jones
As with the £38 billion figure, the Government are very good at not explaining their mistakes. The original figure was, I think, £37 million. It then rose to £39 million, but the MOD subsequently briefed that it was £100 million. However, some informed sources say that it could be upwards of £250 million. The Government should state how much was spent in respect of that disastrous decision, which was taken at a time when the defence budget was experiencing savage cuts. They seem to have swept this matter aside, however, as if it is not important.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
The hon. Gentleman is right: £38 billion is a huge amount of money. However, I should draw his attention to a note entitled:
“Note to Ed Miliband: Defence team work update”.
It states that Labour needs to be
“credible on defence spending and neutralising the ‘£38bn’ charge, which is our biggest weakness.”
So the Labour Defence team think that that charge is Labour’s biggest weakness.
Mr Jones
The Minister is making various assumptions, which is not unusual for him. That note says precisely what I am saying today, which is that we need to shoot down this erroneous myth that has been put about by this Government. If he wants more evidence on this, he should read the National Audit Office “Major Projects Report 2009”. It says of the defence budget:
“The size of the gap is highly sensitive to the budget growth assumptions used. If the Defence budget remained constant in real terms, and using the Department’s forecast for defence inflation of 2.7 per cent, the gap would now be £6 billion over the ten years. If, as is possible given the general economic position, there was no increase in the defence budget in cash terms over the same ten year period, the gap would rise to £36 billion.”
Even the NAO did not reach the £38 billion figure, therefore. I acknowledge that the figure it gives is £2 billion out and this Government seem to think such sums are unimportant, but I have just quoted from the NAO report. That is possibly where Conservative central office first got the figure of £36 billion, but there is a big difference between £36 billion and £38 billion. The £36 billion is based on an assumption of a flat-cash budget over the next 10 years and every single item in the equipment budget being maintained, when everyone who has ever been involved in MOD matters knows that things come into the equipment budget and things fall out of the equipment budget.
The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)
Let me start as the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) did—by paying tribute to the men and women of our armed forces. The job they do is difficult, dangerous and sometimes deadly, but they do it with a professionalism, commitment and courage that we have come to expect but should never take for granted. This weekend is armed forces day, which will give all of us the opportunity to pay tribute to the contribution of the entire defence community.
The House will note that we do not have the pleasure of the company of the shadow Defence Secretary this evening. No criticism attaches to him for going on a defence visit to Australia or for staying on for a few days afterwards. No criticism attaches to him for allowing the Secretary of State to honour a commitment to host Defence Ministers from several of our allies this evening. The only criticism of the shadow Secretary of State is that he has left the poor old hon. Member for North Durham the unenviable task of trying to move this completely nonsensical motion.
Mr Kevan Jones
The Minister is correct that the shadow Secretary of State is in Australia—unfortunately with the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), but I understand that they did not travel on the same plane so that is one good thing for him. He has stayed on after the defence visit because a member of his family there is seriously ill. That is why he is not here today.
Nick Harvey
I am sure we all wish the family member well. I did say that no criticism attaches to the shadow Secretary for his absence and I mean that most emphatically.
The matter before us is this nonsensical motion. It seems to say that the Opposition recognise the need to make the changes we are making, but the fact is that they ducked these changes year after year. They went for 12 years without a defence review, with pressure building up in the defence programme all the time, and there was a black hole of whatever size—we will come back to that in a minute—by the time of the strategic defence and security review. They left our armed forces overstretched, under-equipped and underfunded for the tasks they were set. That is the legacy of the Government in which the hon. Member for North Durham served. The blame for the need to remove platforms, reduce manpower and make the other reductions we have had to do sits very squarely at the previous Government’s door. They wrecked the economy, they wrecked the defence budget and they failed to make the changes necessary to prepare our armed forces for the future.
The hon. Member for North Durham made heavy weather of the black hole. When we began the SDSR process in the summer of 2010 we asked the officials who were presiding over it at the MOD, “What is our baseline and what is the true financial situation as we start this process?” The explanation came that if we took the manpower commitments, all the overheads and all the committed expenditure, including the contracts that had been signed for procurement and those that had been announced by the previous Government as Ministry of Defence policy, and planned to bring them on stream when the Labour party said they would be, over the 10-year period, there was a gap between all that and a “flat real” terms assumption on funding—not a “flat cash” assumption—in relation to the 2010-11 budget. We were told that the gap over the 10-year period would amount to £38 billion. It was a 10-year period because that is the length of time over which the MOD plans its budgets.
The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) said that that was an unreasonable thing to view as a starting point. She compared it with the situation of someone who was about to go personally bankrupt aspiring to buy a Ferrari, but I do not think that is very kind to the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth). When he came to the Dispatch Box a few weeks before Christmas in 2009, he announced that there would be 22 new Chinook helicopters. He did not sign a contract or find the money to pay for them but he announced there would be 22 new Chinook helicopters. I do not know whether in the fantasy budget of the Labour party it does not think that that was a commitment, but it was one of the commitments that that Defence Secretary made, and it was on that basis that the £38 billion black hole was presented to us by officials.
I do not call into question the personal commitment of the hon. Member for North Durham, but he has to recognise that his motion opposes everything that this Government are doing and is pretty scant when it comes to proposing any alternatives. He says that he recognises the need for defence reform, but the only response in his motion is to be concerned, “anxious” and “worried” about how we are clearing up the mess he made. He has not presented one properly costed plan or given us a coherent alternative. He has not given us a plan A, let alone a plan B. He needs to recognise that he has to do better if he wants to hold us to account for what we have done.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister think the decision he has just criticised was better or worse than switching to a “cat and trap” system when first coming into office and then reversing that decision at great cost only a year later?
Nick Harvey
I think it was a perfectly sensible alternative to explore the “cat and trap” option. As we said at the time, it would have given us the ability to project a much better aircraft type off the carrier. I think that to commission the detailed work on that proposal was entirely responsible. If it ends up costing us the maximum, as the Secretary of State suggested, of £100 million, that is a small sum compared with the £1.5 billion the previous Government added to the carrier project in one afternoon, when they announced from the Dispatch Box that it was to be postponed by a year. That was a far greater drain on the defence budget than the relatively small bounded study, which unfortunately concluded that the costs of going ahead with the plan were such that it was not viable.
The shadow Defence Secretary has identified £5 billion of cuts that he says he supports, but that would barely scratch the surface of the black hole that his party’s Government left behind. Of course, his cuts are not new; they are already being made. On Labour’s current public plans, the defence budget would still be in chaos. They have pledged neither to make any extra savings, nor to restore the cuts that have been made. What is interesting is not what they are saying in public, but what they are saying in private. Earlier, reference was made to the interesting correspondence between the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Defence Secretary. It is worth quoting the letter from the Leader of the Opposition to his colleague, dated 23 January this year:
“You have powerfully made the case in your recent interventions that there is no easy future for Defence expenditure and clearly in the context of the current fiscal position we can expect to have to make further savings after the next election.”
In public, the Opposition are against the cuts that we are making, but in secret, they are planning even deeper defence cuts. Today’s debate is not simply opposition, but opportunism as well.
Mr Kevan Jones
We said that at the last general election. What we were not going to do is rush the process. I challenge the Minister of State to place in the Library of the House the details of how he arrived at the £38 billion figure. Today he has said something that no other Minister has ever said: that the £38 billion is over 10 years. The impression has always been given that it is there right now. Will he produce that information? Without it, some of the cuts he is making are not credible.
Nick Harvey
That is absolute nonsense. It has been clear from the outset that the £38 billion figure was over 10 years. I remember many a debate with the shadow Defence Secretary about whether we were talking about the 10 years being measured out on the spending side in flat real or in flat cash, and I have said again tonight that it was by reference to flat real. It has always been a 10-year figure, and the suggestion that we have magicked £38 billion out of spending in two years is clearly nonsensical; it has always been over 10 years. I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman further details of how we worked that out, but there is no getting away from the fact that the Labour Government left behind a massive black hole. The right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) has identified a tiny number of cuts that he thinks need to be made and he has secret plans to make more, but he is not prepared to face up to the difficult decisions that have to be made to clear up the economic inheritance across the piece and specifically in defence.
Transforming Britain’s armed forces by implementing the 2010 SDSR is necessary to recover capabilities after a decade of enduring operations. It is necessary to prepare the armed forces for a future in which threats are diverse, evolving and unpredictable. It is necessary to help to tackle the fiscal deficit and to put the defence budget and equipment plan back into balance. We have to build for the future with strict financial discipline, making certain that the armed forces have confidence that projects in the programme are funded and will be delivered. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced last month, the black hole has now been eliminated and the 10-year defence budget is now in balance. I readily acknowledge that Future Force 2020 will be a smaller fighting force, but it will still be able to deploy a brigade-sized force on a sustained basis on operations, or a divisional-sized force on a best effort.
There was much criticism from the hon. Member for North Durham because we have had to reduce manpower numbers, but it is worth noting that in the memo the Opposition defence team sent back to the leader of their party, they said, in reference to Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel, that they recognised that there would be reductions in personnel numbers. On Army restructuring, too, the memo stated that they recognised the need for manpower reductions. So they recognise the need for the measures we are taking; they just do not like the grim reality of having to do it.
Despite all the changes that we are making, we will still be supported by the fourth-largest defence budget in the world, meeting our financial responsibilities to NATO. We will configure the armed forces for a world where threats to our homeland and allies are increasingly to be found outside Europe, rather than on the north German plain, and we will move from a heavily armoured force to a more mobile, adaptable and deployable force.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
My hon. Friend is right to take no advice from the party that, when in government, more than doubled the national debt, but may I pursue the point about recruitment and downsizing the British Army? Reports suggest that 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is to be axed, despite being one of the best recruited battalions in the British Army and forecast to remain so. Does the Minister accept that decisions about which battalions to axe should be based on the ability to recruit? In that case, the Ministry of Defence should be looking at the Scottish battalions, which consistently have trouble recruiting, with their numbers made up by English soldiers. I would suggest that no Englishman should ever be forced to wear a kilt.
Nick Harvey
I urge my hon. Friend and all other hon. Members not to give credence to speculation about which battalions might end up having to be disbanded or merged. I repeat what I said at Defence questions: the decisions will be taken on the most objective criteria, not on a snapshot of current recruitment. Those criteria will be ensuring that we get the right balance of forces for the future, that we maximise our operational output and that we have the right geographical spread across the country, and that our long-term ability to recruit is assured.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
My grandfather, Hugh Macdonald, served gallantly in the Black Watch and is buried in the military cemetery in Gibraltar, where he died in 1941. I am sure that he was proud to wear a kilt. There were Englishmen serving in the Black Watch then and now—indeed, the Liverpool Scottish part of the Black Watch comes up to Dundee every year. Can the Minister of State give my constituents and serving members of the Black Watch some sort of assurance that, on his watch, there will always be a Black Watch?
Nick Harvey
I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance I have just given the House: the decisions to be taken will be objective decisions against the four criteria that I have just set out. No one should give in to the temptation to believe what they read in the newspapers.
Pete Wishart
Scotland is suffering badly from what is happening in defence spending. Only four of the 148 major Regular Army units are based in our territory. That represents 2.7% of the entire British Army, yet we have 8.4% of the population. Why is Scotland doing so badly when it comes to defence cuts and defence spending?
Nick Harvey
I do not accept either the analysis or the figures offered by the hon. Gentleman. Scotland does well out of defence, and defence does well out of Scotland. We plan our defences for the defence of the United Kingdom as a whole in the most coherent way we can, and Scotland will do a great deal better out of being part of the UK’s defences than it will ever do if it goes on its own and plans its own defence force.
Mr Jenkin
There is speculation that the process is being elongated, perhaps over a number of months, because of political considerations. Does my hon. Friend accept what a large number of armed service men and women are saying—that uncertainty is extremely corrosive, damaging and morale sapping, and the sooner these decisions, however difficult and unpleasant they are, can be made, the better?
Nick Harvey
I agree. Uncertainty always has a destabilising effect. I can assure my hon. Friend and the members of the armed forces that they will not have long to wait. However, it is more important that we get this right than that we do it quickly. These decisions are a once-in-a-generation rebalancing of the Army’s structure. If we get it wrong, the Army will suffer the consequences for decades to come, so it is important to take a little time and get it right. The House will not have long to wait for announcements to be made.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
We hear reports that people are being targeted for redundancy and will therefore not qualify for their full pension. Is that correct? If it is, will the Government look kindly on those affected?
Nick Harvey
Let me say first to my hon. Friend that the issue of disbandment of battalions, which we were just discussing, and redundancy have nothing to do with each other, so nobody should read into the decisions that are taken about particular battalions that members of those battalions will be made redundant. In answer to the specific question that he puts, nobody has been selected on the basis of their proximity to a retirement date, but inevitably it is the case that where there are lines, some unfortunate souls will fall just the wrong side of the line. It is a matter of great regret, but the redundancy payments will in any case be bigger than the lump sums that those personnel would have received at retirement.
Dr Murrison
In making the very difficult decisions that my hon. Friend undoubtedly will have to make in the near future, what attitude does he have to the very gallant men and women from countries other than the United Kingdom who serve in our armed forces? How does he imagine they will be affected by the redundancy programme?
Nick Harvey
In no way will they be singled out. These decisions are being made in the most objective and scientific way we can make them, but inevitably some who serve from overseas will be affected and others will be more fortunate. There is no getting away from that.
Some of the reductions that are to take place will be accounted for by reduced recruiting and fewer extensions of service, but as I said, a redundancy programme is, sadly, inevitable to ensure that the right balance of skills is maintained across the rank structures. Compulsory redundancy will not apply, as we have made clear from the outset, to those in receipt of the operational allowance, those within six months of deploying, or those on post-operational tour leave following those deployments. In all cases it is for the individual service to determine how the necessary reductions can be achieved and over what timeline, making sure that the right mix of skills, experience and ranks are retained.
The main programme for the Royal Navy and the RAF have been concluded, but protecting the Army’s contribution to Afghanistan has meant that two further tranches are still to come for the Army. We will, as I said, make an announcement on Army 2020 very shortly, which will provide clarity on the future structure of the Army. We will have a land force of 120,000, composed of a Regular Army of 82,000, plus 30,000 reserves and an 8,000 training margin. An Army of this composition will have to be structured differently, and it is impossible to do that without losing and merging some units.
Although we cannot avoid difficult decisions as the Army gets smaller, we will seek to do this in the most sensitive way possible, respecting the traditions of the Army, respecting the traditions of our great regiments, but always recognising that military effectiveness must be the first requirement in designing our future structure.
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
I commend what my hon. Friend has just said. When we think about which TA regiments to keep, which to lose and where to put them, I urge him to bear in mind that a unit in the Territorial Army cannot be moved more than a very small distance without losing the people. It is even more critical than in the Regular Army to pick those that have an officer and soldier base that is well recruited; many units do not have such a base. It is vital that we build on the best ones.
Nick Harvey
My hon. Friend makes a good point, which is being taken into account as these difficult decisions are made.
The current financial situation makes it difficult to act as swiftly as we would wish to address some of the issues that make day-to-day life that bit more difficult for personnel and their families. Mention was made of the pause we have had to make on major housing upgrades, but thankfully the £100 million additional investment in accommodation that was announced in the Budget will deliver more than 1,000 new and refurbished single living and service family accommodation units. That will help the MOD to continue to meet its commitment, set out in the armed forces covenant, only to allocate homes that are standard 2 or above.
On the issue of the covenant, I start by recognising the important work done by the hon. Member for North Durham, along with the right hon. Member for Coventry North East, in preparing the ground for the publication of the tri-service armed forces covenant in May last year, which built on many of the suggestions in their Command Paper. We have been able to double the operational tax-free allowance and we have improved rest and recuperation. Council tax relief has been doubled twice since the Government took office, and now stands at nearly £600 per person for a six-month deployment. In health care, we are investing up to £15 million in prosthetics provision for personnel who have lost limbs during service, extended access to mental health and increased the number of veterans’ mental health nurses.
On education, we have set up scholarships for bereaved service children, provided financial help for service leavers who want higher and further education, and introduced the pupil premium for the children of those currently serving, making extra funds available for state schools with service children. More than 50 councils have signed up to the community covenant scheme with another 47 planning to do so, and there is a £30 million grant pot to support that. However, there is a long way to go.
For the first time, the armed forces covenant has been formally published and recognised in legislation, and we are working across Government to ensure that no disadvantage is faced by armed forces personnel, their families and veterans compared with other citizens.
Ever since the publication of the SDSR, the Opposition have been calling for another SDSR. They went 12 years in government without one, but they now seem to want another one every time the wind blows. We have put in place a system for regular strategic review through the National Security Council, and preparations for the SDSR of 2015 are already under way in the MOD. However, none of the strategic assumptions underpinning the 2010 SDSR have significantly changed, so we will press ahead with the implementation of the SDSR based on formidable, adaptable and high-tech armed forces, built on balanced budgets and supported by an effective and efficient MOD, taking the tough decisions that the previous Government ducked, providing our armed forces with the tools they need to do the job we ask of them, upholding the armed forces covenant, and protecting this country’s national security, which is the first and foremost duty of any Government.
Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)
It has been a pleasure to listen to this evening’s debate on defence reform, in which hon. Members have spoken on a number of topics. Let me say at the outset that the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) posed some very pertinent questions to Government Front Benchers.
I am pleased that we are having this debate in the week before armed forces day because it gives us the opportunity to pause and reflect on the bravery of our forces and the sacrifices they make, as has been mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) among others. Our forces do what is asked of them without question or hesitation and they often place their lives on the line to protect others. I am sure that the national event taking place in Plymouth this Saturday will be a great success. In West Dunbartonshire we celebrated armed forces day on Sunday past with a march-past in Dumbarton high street and a service in Riverside parish church.
There is no doubt that the armed forces will face challenges in the coming years, not least as part of the new employment model and the Future Force 2020 plan. Some 30,000 troops will have been removed by 2020. That will have an enormous impact on the UK’s capability, and clarity from Ministers on the decisions they have taken about future capability would be welcome. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) made some excellent points about our maritime capability.
Recent reports have raised concerns that certain regiments are at risk of being scrapped. Belonging to a regiment is a very strong part of many soldiers’ identity. That is why the shadow Secretary of State launched our “Respect Our Regiments” campaign last month. I know that many Members are concerned about regiments and battalions being scrapped, including colleagues from Wales, Yorkshire, Scotland and Staffordshire. I apologise if I have missed anyone out. The Government intend to rely much more heavily on reservists in future, and the Minister knows I am concerned that he and the Government plan to scrap employment protections for reservists while asking for more from them.
Gemma Doyle
The Minister shakes his head but I raised this with him last year and again last week. I know he is going to write to me and I await that letter because our understanding of the situation differs.
Last year, we reached agreement across the House on the armed forces covenant. I will resist the temptation raised by the contribution of the hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher). As he knows and as the record shows, his party and the Minister had to be dragged kicking and screaming into putting the provisions we now have in law into the Armed Forces Act 2011. Anyone can read the record of the Committee proceedings to see that that is correct. The hon. Gentleman’s recollection was frankly a little wobbly. The Minister knows that I do not think the armed forces covenant is yet being taken seriously enough across all of government and the public sector in accordance with the principles set down. I do not doubt his commitment but more work needs to be done to make sure that it is a reality and that it works in practice.
I want to raise the issue of discrimination towards our forces. This concern is highlighted in the recent report by Lord Ashcroft, “The Armed Forces and Society”, which states that one in five members of the forces reports have been refused service in a bar or hotel while wearing their uniform and that around the same number reports being verbally abused while wearing their uniform. That is clearly unacceptable discrimination and if we take the covenant seriously we should be looking at how to tackle such behaviour.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
May I say what a pleasure it is to agree with the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) in rejecting any idea that Scotland would be better off independent, and how much stronger we are—both Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole—as a Union?
Many of the contributions to the debate today show how wide and how deep the admiration and respect for our armed forces runs in the House, and that reflects the feelings across the country. We should not forget that the purpose of our armed forces is to succeed on operations, to protect our national security and to provide the ultimate guarantee of our country’s security and independence, as well as helping to project its values and interests abroad. In Afghanistan today, that is what our soldiers are doing, risking life and limb to keep us safe as we sit in comfort in Westminster.
Operations remain the No. 1 priority for the Ministry of Defence and we will do everything we can to achieve success not just in Afghanistan, but in standing operations around the world and in helping to deliver a safe and secure Olympics this summer. But to make sure that this success continues into the future, we have to make sure that our services are structured properly, that the equipment programme is funded and that the needs of our forces are looked after.
That is why the programme of implementing the SDSR is so necessary—putting the years of Labour mismanagement behind and sorting out the mess. Although it appears that the Opposition recognise the need for change, they still do not appear to understand why there is such a need for change. The shadow Secretary of State for Defence—I am sorry he is not here—has written:
“In beginning to develop future policy we have to be honest about the past.”
Today, not one Member on the Opposition Benches has been honest about the mistakes that the Opposition made in the past. Not one has said sorry—sorry for 12 years without a defence review, sorry for the £38 billion black hole in the budget—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) should stop digging. He has been digging quite enough today. Not one Opposition Member has said sorry for ducking the tough choice required to put our armed forces back on track.
I am afraid that in the limited time available I will not be able to address all the contributions to the debate. The right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) yet again made an impassioned case for RAF Leuchars. It remains our intention that the Army move to Leuchars and the RAF move to Lossiemouth. He asked some very detailed questions. Will he please take those up and I will make sure that my excellent civil servants in the Box bring them to the attention of the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), who would be better at answering than I would be this evening?
Sir Menzies Campbell
The questions were rhetorical. The answer is yes in every case.
Mr Robathan
In which case I do not think my hon. Friend the Minister will be writing to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) made a point about the Nimrod MRA4. It was a procurement disaster. The aircraft were never in service and never flew in service. I say to the hon. Lady and to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) that the Government value the Welsh regiments that she spoke about. I have Welsh antecedents. I had a great uncle killed in Gallipoli in the Welsh Regiment and other relatives in the Welsh regiments, so I can assure her that we value the Welsh regiments. I do not know what is in the report. We must wait until General Carter’s report is published, which it will be, shortly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) drew attention to misleading statements on the naval base that she attributed to the Labour press office. If that is the case, it is regrettable. We have no intention whatsoever of closing the Portsmouth naval base.
The hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) raised an important point about audit, accountability and the need to reform NATO. I suggest that he takes that up—I am looking again at my excellent civil servants—with the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr Howarth), who is responsible for such matters, and I am sure that he will get back to him on that.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster) for his sensible look at defence strategy and the future of the reserves. I am sure that we are looking forward to seeing him in uniform tomorrow as a serving officer. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) was keen to encourage the defence industry and exports. Three Defence Ministers spend their time going around areas trying to encourage defence exports. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was widely criticised, including by Labour Front-Bench spokesmen, when he tried to encourage exports to the middle east. I am very glad to have the hon. Lady’s support. She referred to the economic difficulties that the Government have got themselves into since 2010. I do not think so. I really do not think so.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) made a good point about housing. We are working on banks and mortgages, as he asked, and BFPO addresses will now be accepted as proper addresses for security. I am very much looking forward to seeing my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) on armed forces day in Plymouth this weekend.
I must tell the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) that we are not making reductions in the armed forces out of callousness, but with huge regret, and it is painful to us. We are doing it because of the appalling financial situation that the Government received when they took office in 2010.
The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire is not correct that there is any intention to reduce protection for employment of reservists deployed. I am delighted to hear her praying in aid again my noble Friend Lord Ashcroft. I have never heard praise from the Labour Benches for Lord Ashcroft before, but I am pleased to hear it now. Perhaps she will bring forward an analysis of discrimination. I draw her attention to a letter that has been sent to the shadow Defence Secretary from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which says:
“I welcome the work conducted by Lord Ashcroft…I was reassured that that public support for our Armed Forces remains ‘very high’”.
He particularly says:
“I would welcome a discussion with you on how we can ensure that everything we do in Parliament emphasises our cross-party support for the Armed Forces and the people who serve in them.”
The Opposition probably rather regret calling this debate today. They have made themselves look somewhat foolish. While I remember, may I say how sorry I am to hear about the shadow Secretary of State’s relation in Australia? I understand that he is very ill and we wish him the very best in that illness, and I mean that sincerely. However, having been nice to the hon. Member for North Durham, let me say that he admitted that Labour was planning savings in restructuring the Army and then attacked us for doing just that. The Opposition remain in denial. They seem to say that everything was great in defence at the general election. It was not. As the shadow Secretary of State has identified, the Opposition’s greatest weakness remains the black hole that they left us. Today, the team has been revealed in all its glory. The Opposition have shown that they have no real defence policy. They have no answers to the problems in defence. They have no acceptance of the difficult position that we are in and no acceptance of the mess made by the Labour Government of the Government finances and of the defence budget.
In conclusion—
Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.