Written Statements

Friday 13th January 2017 Written Statements

Friday 13 January 2017

Defence Infrastructure Reform

Friday 13th January 2017 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mark Lancaster)]

Defence infrastructure is a vital component in enabling the armed forces to train and prepare for operations and for the Ministry of Defence (MOD) to deliver its outputs. The MOD spends nearly £5 billion each year operating, maintaining, constructing and disposing of its extensive infrastructure base, which represents 1.8% of the UK land area.

In November, we announced a long-term programme to invest £4 billion over the next decade in an estate that will help deliver strategic defence and security review 2015’s ambitious plan for joint force 2025, enabling savings in running costs of £140 million over 10 years, while releasing 91 of our most expensive sites by 2040. This will help to deliver the MOD’s contribution of land sufficient for 55,000 new homes towards the Government’s housing target.

In parallel, we have reviewed how our estate is managed and infrastructure decisions are approached, taken, and implemented across the whole of defence. This includes the role of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), the Royal Navy, Army and Air Force commands and MOD head office. The aim has been to ensure that every pound we spend on our estate represents optimum value for money.

We have reached two principal conclusions from this review. First, we will achieve improved allocation of available funding if infrastructure decisions that bear on the work of the military commands are taken by them rather than by the DIO. The commands are better placed to balance infrastructure requirements against other enablers of military capability such as equipment and trained personnel for which they already hold the budgets. In line with the defence operating model, we therefore plan to delegate this authority, and the relevant funding, to the commands and to Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) from April 2018, subject to confirmation later this year that all parts of the organisation are ready to support this, and that effective safeguards are in place to ensure that we continue to drive towards a better estate that more efficiently and effectively enables military capability.

Secondly, we will restructure the DIO to operate more effectively in the new delegated environment. This means making it more customer facing at both the strategic and operational level, improving its internal operation so that it can work better with and deliver better value from infrastructure providers, and also strengthening its abilities to act to assure that appropriate standards are being met across the defence estate and to provide Ministers with advice on the long-term affordability of the estate and the strategic implications for the estate of decisions taken by the commands. Since 2014 a strategic business partner contract has been in place with Capita, under which they lead and manage the DIO. Capita have been instrumental in helping us deliver the Better Defence Estate strategy and in sustaining specialist capability. We are reviewing with Capita how their continued support can be adapted to the new infrastructure model we now envisage.

[HCWS410]

OSCE Ministerial Council, Hamburg

Friday 13th January 2017 Written Statements

[The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)]

I represented the United Kingdom at the 23rd Ministerial Council meeting of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), held in Hamburg, Germany on 8-9 December 2016 and hosted by German Foreign Minister and OSCE Chairman-in-Office Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The Council is the top decision-making body of the OSCE and was attended by Ministers from across its 57 participating states.

The Council took place in the final month of a year when the OSCE has continued to be at the centre of the international response to the Ukraine crisis, via its special monitoring mission, its observer mission to two Russian checkpoints on the Ukrainian-Russian border and through its membership of the trilateral contact group. Ukraine remained the core element of many statements in plenary by participating states including by US Secretary of State Kerry, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Klimkin and EU High Representative Mogherini among others. In my interventions in the discussions that took place on 8 December I repeated our strong support for Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity and expressed deep concern at the ongoing situation in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

A number of other important issues were also discussed. The UK used the event to highlight the need to resolve other protracted conflicts and to minimise the risk of new conflict, including by reducing military risk through conventional arms control. I joined Georgian Foreign Minister Janelidze and other ‘Friends of Georgia’, including US Secretary of State, John Kerry in expressing our support to Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and calling on Russia to reverse its recognition of Georgia’s regions as independent states. I also underlined the UK’s ongoing support for the OSCE’s autonomous institutions and its field missions including in my bilateral discussions with Michael Link, Director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and Dunja Mijatovic, the representative on freedom of the media.

Behind the scenes, the UK delegation continued to negotiate a range of declarations and decisions for adoption by the Ministerial Council. These negotiations made progress in a number of areas, resulting in a declaration welcoming the broad range of the OSCE’s project assistance in the field of small arms and light weapons and stockpiles of conventional ammunition. A declaration on the OSCE framework for conventional arms control was also agreed, signalling approval for a structured dialogue between participating states on the current and future challenges and risks to security in the OSCE area. Declarations and decisions were also made on migration, on reducing the risks of conflict stemming from the use of information and communication technologies, on enhancing the use of advance passenger information, and on strengthening good governance and promoting economic connectivity.

Divergent approaches limited the scope to reach consensus on a number of proposed declarations. It was particularly disappointing that disagreement from certain participating states to the inclusion of a reference to Crimea meant that a declaration on the OSCE’s role in, and support to, Ukraine could not be agreed, despite 56 of the 57 participating states agreeing the text. It was also disappointing that, despite the best efforts of the UK and other states, attempts to agree decisions in the human dimension failed, primarily due to further Russian obstructionism. However, the UK was instrumental in securing the agreement of 42 participating states to a joint statement on human rights which was delivered by the Ambassador to Norway to the OSCE during the closing session.

I met Irish Foreign Minister Dara Murphy and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu on non-OSCE business.

A copy of the UK plenary intervention can be found online on the gov.uk website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/world-location-news/united-kingdom-statement-to-the-23rd-osce-ministerial-council

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