Defence Implementation Road Map

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 General Committees

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

What a pleasure, Mr Hanson, to serve under your chairmanship twice in a week. This is becoming a regular occurrence.

It may help the Committee if I explain a little of the background and why the European Scrutiny Committee recommended this Commission report for debate. A precursor July 2013 Commission communication, “Towards a more competitive and efficient defence and security sector”, was part of the preparations for the December 2013 Defence Council, the first for five years on the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy—CSDP. It was designed for Heads of State and Governments to agree its strategic direction over the next few years and it was one of a trio of scene-setting documents, all of which were debated.

This Commission report set out a high-level roadmap for implementing activities proposed in the earlier communication. The Minister declared himself encouraged by the Commission’s approach as it began the follow-through process, but the previous Scrutiny Committee had concluded that there was still a significant number of areas that could go in the wrong direction notwithstanding the Minister’s best endeavours, so that Committee accordingly formally requested the opinion of the then Select Committee on Defence.

In brief, the Defence Committee shared the Minister’s concerns that any detailed action in respect of an EU-wide security-of-supply regime and the defence procurement directive could lead to unnecessary regulation, encourage European protectionism, constrain the Government’s ability to make their own defence procurement decisions, or risk undermining the UK’s and other European partners’ relations with the United States. It expressed concerns about a proposed green paper on the control of the defence industry’s capability and the value of new legislation in this area. It was also concerned about Commission action in third-country markets and what value would be added by the Commission’s extending its activities in this area.

The Defence Committee agreed with the Minister that export policy should be a matter of national sovereignty and said that any CSDP-related preparatory action on dual-use research should ensure that UK national interests are protected and that intellectual property rights remain with the industry and not the Commission. Notwithstanding the increasing synergies between the defence and civil sectors, it questioned what value the European Commission could add in a number of areas for action outlined in the report. It also stated that research and development in science and technologies applicable to defence, which the Committee called

“the life-blood of the military capabilities of advanced states and alliances”,

must remain free from unnecessary bureaucracy, especially where dual-use technologies were in development. It concluded that it was concerned that initiatives might arise from this roadmap that would lead to unnecessary legislation and duplication of effort with NATO.

In summary, the Defence Committee strongly endorsed the previous Committee’s view that this report should be debated.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

No, I cannot give way at this point.

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[Mr Brazier]

May I just set my hon. and gallant Friend’s mind at rest? There are a number of risks from the Commission, as I have set out, and we are looking forward to seeing the new document that comes out of the Commission after Christmas, but the EDA is not a threat. It is a low-budget organisation, which, in the words of its last director, is basically a speed-dating agency. It enables European countries that are interested in a particular area to sit together, discuss things and find ways of saving money. I mentioned helicopter training as an example. It is not a threat in the way that he describes. There are some threats potentially coming out of the Commission, although I do not think they are as bad as they were a year or two ago, and I outlined some of them in my speech, but I assure my hon. and gallant Friend that that is not one of them.

[Mr Spellar]

May I take the Minister back to shipbuilding? Will he tell us what naval shipbuilding capacity there still is in France, Germany and Spain, which are all exporting to a number of other countries? I am not sure about Italy. Germany and Italy also have major civilian capacity in building cruise ships. What are the Government doing, apart from buying ships from South Korea, to help that position?

[Mr Brazier]

What we are doing about it is that we have the largest set of naval shipbuilding orders placed of any European country. Each of the major European countries chooses, as we do, to place all its warship orders with its domestic market. Merchant shipbuilding capacity in this country and all its major features had disappeared long before the coalition Government took office—little of it was left in 2010, let alone 2015—but the reality is that we are placing a whole series of very large orders for naval shipbuilding.

[Mr Spellar]

Was it not the case that with the vessels referred to on the civil side an offer was in fact made by an Italian company to undertake the design work, with the build in UK yards, but that offer was spurned by Ministry of Defence officials?

[Mr Brazier]

I will have to write to the right hon. Gentleman unless—[Interruption.] Ah, I have a note coming, so I shall respond to him in a little while.

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[Mr Jones]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I stand before the Committee as a pro-European and I will be arguing for this country to remain a member of the EU, but the document before us today demonstrates how the EU is extending itself into areas that mean that it tests the patience even of Europhiles such as myself.

The debate around European defence is a long one. It goes back to the end of the second world war, the foundation of the Western European Union and the treaty of Brussels. We had arguments then about standardisation of equipment and pooling of defence capabilities across Europe. I agree that a cornerstone of our defence should be NATO, but even though this document reflects that, there is a way—I suspect that some Conservative Members will see this as another wicked plot from across the sea—of influencing the sovereign capability and decision making of this country. It is clear that defence matters should be for individual nation states in Europe to decide, and I understand that that is what the Government are arguing in their response to the document, but I have a problem with some of the things that are coming forward.

The first item in the document is that the Commission’s aim is to have an internal market for the defence industry. Thanks to the actions of the previous Labour Government, of which you were a member, Mr Hanson, we have one of the most open and competitive defence markets anywhere in the world. We have only to look at the companies that have now based themselves here or worked with existing capacity here to see why we have that open and competitive market. Finmeccanica, Thalys, Boeing and General Dynamics are just a few of them, and that is because the Labour Government’s approach was that our market should be open not just to Europe, but to the world. I argue strongly that this country, in terms of defence capability, has benefited from that process. The danger with the approach taken in this document is that we look at defence or defence manufacturing as though a fence can be put around it in terms of just Europe. That is not the case. It is a global, international market these days.

[Mr Spellar]

My hon. Friend rightly identifies some of the benefits from engaging with the wider defence industry. However, there has to be some payback for that—some degree of equity. Does he therefore share my frustration at the failure of the United States in this regard? Despite the fact that Brimstone is far and away the most effective weapon—it is favoured, actually, by the United States air force—it is being blocked within the system because of narrow industrial interests. Does that not cast a slight shadow over the wider co-operation that my hon. Friend rightly identified and welcomed?

[Mr Jones]

It does. My right hon. Friend and I spent a week in Washington trying to persuade US Congressmen and Senators to make sure that there was nothing wrong in ensuring that technology transfers should be a two-way street. The problem is that although a lot of claims are made about the US defence market being open and transparent, anyone with experience of it knows that protection is clear.

Such protection, however, comes up in Europe. The document talks about overcapacity in the European defence industries, but there is a reason for that: the protectionist policies of certain members, including France, Germany and others. They have not opened up their markets, not only not to US and international competitors, but also not to UK companies. There have been some good examples, as the Minister rightly pointed out, of good defence co-operation and manufacture between European nations and our own, which have been of benefit to not only those nations, but ours.

The objective, according to the document, of

“an Internal Market for Defence where European companies can operate freely and without discrimination in all Member States”,

is frankly pie in the sky. The idea that the French defence market or shipbuilding industry, for example, will be open to competition throughout Europe is unrealistic. A few years ago in Paris, when I was a member of the Defence Committee, I asked the Member for Brest whether she envisaged a French aircraft carrier being built anywhere other than Brest. She looked at me quizzically and said, “I don’t understand the question.”

The Commission is pressing forward in that area, and that has real dangers for our defence industries. It is not, frankly, an area in which the Commission should be getting involved. I fully support, as the Minister does, existing co-operation in the EU for operations that lie outside NATO or involving other countries, but that is where it should stay. If the market comes into our defence industries, that will block off a lot of the opportunities that this country has for co-operation not only with the United States, which is an important market, but with other growing markets around the world. For example, in the south-east Asian market, the easy transfer between civilian technologies and defence ones brings capabilities that could benefit our defence industries. If they are somehow locked out, because our procurement is restricted to Europe, not only will our defence industries suffer, but so could what is on offer to the men and women of our armed forces.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

As a former Defence Minister, the hon. Gentleman will know that Ministers of the Crown never talk about special forces in the Chamber. On his wider point about the size of the pool in the armed forces as a whole, our commitment, as shown most recently by the 2% announcement, is to outstanding armed forces in quality and equipment.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I understand that the coroner is due to give his judgment shortly, possibly tomorrow, in the case of the reservists who died in the Brecon Beacons. Will the Minister undertake to come to the House and make a statement following that judgment?

[Mr Brazier]

We will have to wait for tomorrow’s judgment before making a decision on that.

Britain and International Security

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We are invigorating our forces. It is because we have the defence budget in order now and have dealt with the mess that we inherited in 2010 that we are able to reinvest. We are one of the very few countries in the world that is now building aircraft carriers and hunter-killer submarines and ordering new armoured vehicles for the Army. We are reinvigorating our forces and I shall come in a moment to how exactly we are doing that.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that during the cold war our and NATO’s defence and security policy was shaped by our assessment of the threat. In the current circumstances, what is the Ministry of Defence and the Secretary of State’s view of the threat today?

[Michael Fallon]

I have started to describe some of the principal threats today from state and non-state actors.

[Mr Spellar]

Not threats—the threat.

[Michael Fallon]

We face a number of threats—that is obvious to everybody. We cannot choose between them. They are out there, and this year, because we are conducting our strategic defence and security review, which I will come to in a moment, we are able to look at them in the round. That is the answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question.

As far as NATO’s immediate assurance measures are concerned, our Typhoons are protecting Baltic airspace and will be back next year to continue their mission for the third year running. Our warships have been patrolling the Baltic sea, and our ground troops have exercised this year alongside their counterparts in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania. We are also doubling spending on the training of Ukrainian forces to about £6 million and providing additional training tasks in medical evacuation, winter survival and reconnaissance skills. We have already trained about 650 members of the Ukrainian armed forces, and by this autumn we expect to have trained nearly 1,000. We have increased our contribution to NATO’s new very high readiness joint taskforce, and we will augment it with 1,000 troops each year into the next decade. At the same time, we have been playing a leading role in helping to address the migrant issue, with HMS Bulwark rescuing literally thousands from the Mediterranean.

We are not just tackling the symptoms of instability; we are working on its causes, too. We plan to deploy some 130 military personnel to Nigeria between now and the end of September. They will assist the new Government in a range of tasks, including training those Nigerian units deploying on counter-Boko Haram operations. That is a significant increase on the numbers previously deployed. We are continuing to mentor the next generation of Afghan army officers, and we are supporting the people of Sierra Leone in their struggle against the scourge of Ebola and bringing humanitarian help to those affected by the Nepalese earthquake.

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[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

I start by welcoming the new Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), to his role. I hope it goes well for him.

Today’s debate is of great importance. As the Secretary of State said, it has taken on even greater significance after the harrowing events in Tunisia and the separate attacks in Kuwait and France last week. Like him, I extend our heartfelt sympathies to the family and friends of all those killed or injured. This must be a truly desperate time for them, and they deserve our full and unstinting support. I also pay tribute to the consular staff, police, Foreign Office officials, service personnel and others who assisted in the highly professional multi-agency response to the appalling tragedy and horror in Tunisia. I am sure I speak for the whole House in expressing our deep gratitude for their effectiveness in the face of a highly challenging and dynamic situation.

As if we needed reminding, the events of the past few days have shown that the security of British citizens does not begin and end at the border. The interconnected nature of the modern world is such that the radicalisation of a graduate in Tunisia can have consequences as profound for the safety of British citizens as if that graduate lived here in the UK. Last week’s tragedy again emphasised the fact that the fight against Islamic extremism will be gruelling and enduring. It would be easy to conclude, as some already have, that taking on such a poisonous ideology is all too difficult and we cannot win. That is a counsel of despair, and we should have no truck with it. This has to be the time when the democratic nations of the world come together with those battling the threat wherever it occurs. Terrorism cannot be allowed to succeed, and the terrorists have to know that our will to defeat them remains undiminished.

I wish to respond directly to the Secretary of State’s comments about the possibility of further action against ISIL. We are all horrified by what has happened in Tunisia and by the growing threat that ISIL poses. We must tackle that threat to our citizens both at home and abroad. We stand ready to work with the Government to defeat ISIL and will carefully consider any proposals that they decide to bring forward. We all need to be clear about what difference any action would make to our objective of defeating ISIL, the nature of that action, its objectives and its legal basis. Any potential action must command the support of other nations in the region, including Iraq, and the coalition that is already taking action in Syria.

This is a time for a considered assessment of the best course of action that we can take to defeat this deadly threat to the UK—an objective that unites all of us throughout the House. In redoubling our efforts to tackle extremism in the middle east, north Africa and beyond, we need to be honest not only about the scale of the challenge but about where we may have gone wrong. Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent over the past decade, a territory controlled by jihadis, spanning northern Iraq and Syria, is hundreds of times larger and better organised than anything al-Qaeda ever conceived of. The fall of Mosul was a victory of 1,300 men over a 60,000-strong force of Iraqi army and police. The United States has said that five of 18 army and police divisions disintegrated completely in the fall of northern Iraq last year.

The Syrian crisis comprises five different conflicts that cross-infect and exacerbate each other. It started with a popular revolt against Assad, which soon became intertwined with the struggle between Sunnis and the Alawites. That then fed into the wider Sunni-Shi’a conflict, with a standoff between the US, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states on one side and Iran, Iraq and the Lebanese Shi’a on the other.

That all demonstrates that it is essential that the Government and all of us recognise that, given the ever closer relationship between development, foreign policy and defence, political solutions are essential in order to ensure long-term stability. That is the crucial point at the heart of this afternoon’s debate. Military activity can create the conditions for politics to succeed, but there have to be strong alliances and clear objectives. That is the strategic challenge that will have to be met in the coming years if the threat to us both at home and abroad is to be tackled successfully.

I acknowledge that there are no easy solutions, but is it not crucial that the Government work with our allies to bridge the sectarian divide and bring together what seem, at least from the outside, implacable enemies to fight ISIL? Will the Minister who winds up the debate say what more the Government propose to do to tackle the threat of ISIL and how we can improve Iraqi resilience on the ground? How can we better empower and work with our regional allies and build up the relationships that are so crucial to the success we need? Similarly, what role are the armed forces playing here at home to support operations by the police and the security services to prevent Islamic extremist terrorism here in the UK?

Today’s debate is one of the most crucial of our time—not the debate in the House, although that is important, but the debate in our country about what our future global role should be. Many hon. Members have participated in that debate. Our belief is that the country stands at a crossroads. Which path should we take? Our view is that withdrawing from the world is not just undesirable but impossible. Britain can and must play a positive role in securing and improving international security. Our allies look to us to take up that mantle, and in short we have a responsibility to do so.

[Mr Spellar]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to the more general issue, will he clarify the fact that the House’s refusal in 2013 to become involved in a brief bombing campaign against Assad—Members of all parties were involved in that decision—has absolutely no logical connection with taking military action against Daesh? Linking the two does not serve the interests of developing a proper national policy.

[Vernon Coaker]

My right hon. Friend’s well made point is crucial to the debates that we will have in the House. The decision about whether we should take action in 2013 was related to Assad and his use of chemical weapons. The House as a whole took the view that it was not convinced that the motion before it would help us deal with that problem.

The Defence Secretary has not put a proposal before the House today, but he suggested that we may need to consider what further action can be taken, and how we should deal with Islamic extremism and with Daesh or ISIL. The situation is totally different today compared with 2013, and we do no service to the country—or to anyone—if we are not clear about the difference between 2013 and 2015. We must all consider how we tackle Islamic extremism and terrorism, and keep our country and citizens safe. There will be debate and discussion on that, and people will have different views, but if we conflate 2013 with 2015, or whenever, we will not do the country a service, let alone anyone else.

Trident Renewal

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes that Trident should not be renewed.

It is a pleasure to move the motion, which stands in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru—the party of Wales—and the Green party. I am also pleased that the motion is supported by other Members, such as the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who has a long-standing, principled position on this issue.

I thank, in advance, the Secretary of State for Defence for replying to this SNP-Plaid Cymru debate and the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who has responsibility for defence equipment, support and technology, for closing the debate, and the shadow Secretary of State for his participation on behalf of the official Opposition.

Today’s debate is the first opportunity to debate Trident replacement since the publication of the Government’s 2014 update to Parliament on Trident, published on 18 December. That document confirmed that a further £261 million had been reprofiled to be spent on the project ahead of the maingate stage, when MPs will decide whether to authorise construction of new submarines, thereby confirming that Trident is not subject to the Government’s austerity agenda. The document also confirms that the maingate decision will be reached in early 2016. MPs re-standing for election in 2015 and candidates for all parties can expect to be asked by electors how they would vote on Trident.

This debate also offers the first opportunity for the Government and Members to report back from the international conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, held in December in Vienna, and comes ahead of a demonstration on scrapping Trident taking place this Saturday in London, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The event starts outside the Ministry of Defence on Horse Guards avenue, just off Whitehall, at noon, and I encourage as many people as possible who want Trident scrapped to attend.

I also put on the record the sincere appreciation of myself, my colleagues and others in the House to Kate Hudson of CND UK, John Ainslie of CND Scotland and Ben Folley, who supports parliamentary CND, as well as all colleagues in other disarmament and non-proliferation organisations.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is being fulsome in his praise for CND. Does he think that that organisation was right during the cold war to dismiss the Soviet threat?

[Angus Robertson]

I do not think anybody should dismiss threats at any time, but the question is whether one believes that the threat of catastrophic nuclear annihilation worked. I happen to believe that nuclear deterrents have not worked, and there are plenty of examples of conflicts that were not avoided—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Spellar]

rose—

[Angus Robertson]

Forgive me, but I want to make some progress. The right hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make a speech later, and I look forward to hearing it.

The time has come to put down a marker about scrapping Trident and not replacing these weapons of mass destruction. At present, a UK Trident submarine remains on patrol at all times, and each submarine carries an estimated eight missiles, each of which can carry up to five warheads. In total, that makes 40 warheads, each with an explosive power of up to 100 kilotons of conventional high explosive—eight times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, killing an estimated 240,000 people from blast and radiation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angus Robertson]

If common sense were to prevail, it would have a positive impact on other countries. In the first instance, we have to be responsible for the decisions we make in this country, but I remember that when President Nelson Mandela announced he was changing the South African Government’s position on nuclear weapons, he was lauded for it by Members on both sides of the House. I think the UK would be lauded for making a similar decision.

[Mr Spellar]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Angus Robertson]

I am going to make some progress now. I have given way generously to Members on both sides of the House.

The benefits that I have outlined from the 2013 report could inform the strategic defence and security review that will follow the general election if we were to recast the UK’s approach to nuclear weapons. The reasons for doing so should be obvious to all; they were written about this week in an article, which I would commend to Members, by Paul Mason of “Channel 4 News”. He wrote:

“Russia, jihadis or cyberwarfare—which is the most urgent of the new threats we face? The forthcoming strategic review will force the British military establishment to ask difficult questions. It must separate real threats from imagined ones.

It is in this context that Britain’s hapless defence establishment has to carry out yet another strategic defence and security review. The last one, in 2010, was a valiant effort to impose philosophical coherence on policies, commitments and projects that had become self-perpetuating, strategically meaningless and financially unsustainable. It did not succeed.

In 2010, the essential problem boiled down to two things: maintaining (and modernising) Britain's capacity to do expeditionary warfare, as in the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan; and boosting the strategic end of the armed forces—Trident and the Royal Navy—so that we could still claim to be a world power.”

It is worth reflecting on what Paul Mason wrote because of the squeeze to UK conventional defence capabilities in recent years. We have seen significant cuts to personnel, basing, capabilities and, frankly and sadly, too often a substandard approach to the safety of our service personnel.

Members are well aware of the recent difficulties the MOD is in, in terms of cutting regular troop numbers and filling the gaps with reserves. Bases have been closed, including the end of flying operations from two out of three air bases in Scotland. Crucial capability gaps have been exposed, including the absence of a single maritime patrol aircraft since the scrapping of the entire Nimrod fleet. I observe that the Irish Air Corps has more maritime patrol aircraft than the UK at present. In recent weeks in my constituency, one has been able to regularly see maritime patrol aircraft from other countries operating from RAF Lossiemouth, helping to fill a capability that the UK currently has no concrete plans to fill.

Similar shortcomings have been exposed with other capabilities needed to deal with

“violations of national airspace, emergency scrambles, narrowly avoided midair collisions, close encounters at sea, simulated attack runs and other dangerous actions”.

As has been officially confirmed, the Royal Navy has on a number of occasions “gapped” the provision of fleet ready escort vessels; that is, there was no availability of the appropriate vessel to patrol and screen in UK waters.

My constituents have on a number of occasions been able to see the Admiral Kuznetsov, the largest vessel in the Russian northern fleet, and it has been widely reported about the MOD initially depending on reports from Scottish fishing boats before Royal Navy vessels interdicted the visiting vessels from Russia after being dispatched from the south coast of England.

In recent years we have also had to go through a variety of issues where service personnel equipment malfunctioned or was not up to the appropriate safety standard. Most recently, and tragically, this was exposed after the death of three of my constituents aboard two RAF Tornados that collided above the Moray firth. The Tornado fleet still does not have collision avoidance systems fully installed, decades after they were recommended, and there are no concrete plans or timetables for that potentially life-saving equipment for Typhoons or F35 jets. The MOD has the wrong priorities, investing billions in nuclear weapons that it can never use but not properly managing the conventional armed forces which are so necessary.

The national security strategy noted in 2010 that, in a period of changing security threats, it would be sensible to consider how ending the Trident replacement programme would release resources that could be spent on more effective security measures. What commitment will the Secretary of State give to the national security strategy informing the strategic defence and security review on the issue of nuclear weapons? In 2010, the NSS downgraded the threat of a nuclear weapon conflict without the SDSR downgrading the role of nuclear weapons in our military capability. That mistake should not be repeated in 2015.

The Defence Committee, in its report “Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century”, argued that at some point in the future the core role of nuclear weapons could be achieved by the deployment of advanced conventional weapons. The NSS and SDSR 2015 should model and scenario-plan such situations, and allow MPs to assess the findings, before we commit further billions to the construction of Trident replacement. Ahead of a final decision on the construction of Trident replacement submarines at the 2016 maingate, the role of SDSR 2015 should be to deliver the most open consultation and debate on the role of UK nuclear weapons and whether we should maintain them at all.

Does the Secretary of State recognise that with the national security strategy placing international terrorism, cybercrime and major accidents and natural hazards such as coastal flooding at the top tier of threats to the UK, recent experience suggests that these areas need greater resources, rather than the false priorities of the nuclear deterrent?

On the cost of Trident replacement, we know from studies, including “In the Firing Line”—an investigation into the hidden costs of replacing Trident—that the costs are astronomic and approach £100 billion. It is not just the costs of development and construction. It is also about the in-service running costs over decades. It is worth noting that despite the fact that Parliament has not given maingate approval for Trident replacement, the MOD has already spent between £2 billion and £3 billion on what are called long-lead items.

Most recently, news emerged about the purchase of the “common missile compartment” that is being built in the US at a cost of approximately £37 million. The spec of the common missile compartment has 12 launch tubes and runs contrary to claims by the MOD in the 2010 SDSR that it will

“reduce the number of operational launch tubes on the submarines from 12 to eight”.

Also the UK’s disarmament ambassador, John Duncan, told the UN that the plan was to

“configure the next generation of submarines accordingly with only eight operational missile”

tubes.

The Royal United Services Institute has estimated that the construction cost of Trident replacement will consume 35% of the procurement budget by the early 2020s. The Minister should be concerned that the cost overruns we have seen with other MOD major projects, such as the Astute submarines, Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers and A400M refuelling aircraft, will be replicated with Trident replacement and will further impact on resources for other equipment and capabilities.

Has the Secretary of State read the recent media reports that the replacement of Britain’s nuclear deterrent means that his Department will be forced to make more significant cuts to troop numbers unless the next Government agree to keep real-terms increases to the defence budget—something that is not being offered to other Departments?

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[Michael Fallon]

I think that the House will be grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that he is still committed to a continuous at-sea deterrent. I hope that he will send a copy of those words to the Leader of the Opposition, so that there can no longer be any lingering doubt in Scotland about whether or not this is a continuous at-sea deterrent.

[Mr Spellar]

The right hon. Gentleman is putting up a sterling smokescreen for the Government’s position, as many of his Back-Bench colleagues know. He talks of coalitions. He is not getting on with this because he is in an unholy coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who are preventing him from taking action. He is making a good show of it, but, as he says that he is being clear, let him now be clear to the House.

[Michael Fallon]

The right hon. Gentleman anticipates me, because I now want to turn—indeed, I think we all now want to turn—to the position of the Liberal Democrats. On the one hand, the Liberal Democrats have said that they want to spend billions to

“replace some of the submarines”,

and to make our deterrent part time. They have also committed themselves—at their most recent conference—to allowing our submarines to go to sea with unarmed missiles. Those would be pointless patrols, and that is a pointless nuclear deterrent policy. There are no Liberal Democrats in the Ministry of Defence, and the fact that they have adopted such a reckless and, frankly, dangerous approach explains why.

This country faces the threat of nuclear blackmail from rogue states. It is therefore contemptible for the Scottish nationalists or the Liberal Democrats to suggest that they might use the ultimate guarantor of our freedom and independence as some kind of bargaining chip in some grubby coalition deal. To put it more simply, it is only the Conservative party that will not gamble with the security of the British people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

On question 14, I call Mr John Spellar.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

No. 15, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has quite taken my hint, but I am sure that he can ask his question under this one with great dexterity.

[Mr Spellar]

Is there not great concern in Libya about the future of the surface-to-air missiles? When I asked the Minister for the Armed Forces about this back in June, he said:

“We continue to assess the situation in Libya closely, including the potential proliferation of man-portable anti-aircraft missiles.”—[Official Report, 28 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 672W.]

From his answer earlier, he does not seem to have been doing a great deal. This is a major threat and we need some evidence of urgency and some results.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the progress towards an arms trade treaty is encouraging. The recent preparatory committee meeting certainly went well. As I have said, the UK maintains rigorous controls. Clearly, the changing political situation means that we will have to monitor sales to various countries far more closely. When considering future export licensing applications, we will follow the terms of the newly agreed UN arms embargo in the case of Libya. In terms of other countries, such sales have been going on for some time, as my hon. Friend said, but I am pleased to say that there have been no recent sales to Bahrain, for example.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

We should all welcome the advances towards an international treaty. However, I urge the Minister to point out to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) the huge importance of the British aerospace industry to the economy not only of the country, but of the regions where it employs many thousands of skilled workers. In that context, the criteria for deciding to whom we sell should be current criteria. For example, we should consider the huge advances made in Indonesia under President Yudhoyono, not only in its economy, but in human rights and democracy in that country. Will there be an up-to-date assessment of which countries are appropriate?

[Nick Harvey]

We keep under constant review the progress made in different parts of the world, and apply that against the criteria. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Government recognise the significance of defence exports and the rigorous controls that are in place. Exports bring great value to the economy, industry and defence. They contribute not only to our defence diplomacy, but to the interoperability of our systems with those of our allies around the world.