Situation in the Red Sea

Debate between Julian Lewis and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. Perhaps he should refer to what was said by his hon. Friend the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee about the diplomatic effort. I thought that her point about Arab-led initiatives was well made. Perhaps the Government should listen to that as a future intention. I think that is more to the point than engaging in military action, which has been ongoing for some time.

My SNP colleagues and I gave the first round of strikes against the Houthi targets qualified support earlier this month, and we do so again in respect of the latest strikes, but as we begin to slide towards what seems almost like an inevitable longer-term commitment, it cannot be said often enough that the “what”, the “how’” and the “why” of UK grand strategy are, at least from my perspective, dangerously out of sync. Let us start with last week’s keynote announcement from the Defence Secretary, who I see is no longer in their place, that

“The era of the peace dividend is over and 2024 will mark an inflection point.”

On the surface, that is a pretty banal observation, but whether we call it the polycrisis or the age of grey-zone conflict, those of us who come to these debates on a regular basis have been talking about the possibilities of this type of thing happening at least since I arrived in 2015. I am not sure how 2024 will be anywhere near the inflection points that 2014 or 2022 were; none the less, that is a bold statement from the Secretary of State. It is important to say that he also backed it up with the announcement of a £405 million investment in so-called drone-killing Sea Viper missiles.

On the surface, it would seem that the Secretary of State has got his why and his what sorted. We just need a how, and that is where I think we begin to run into trouble. For all the high-falutin’ rhetoric from the MOD main building, I am not sure that anyone here really believes we are going to meet the how in the form of an increase in defence spending to meet these new threats, given the disastrous state of the MOD’s finances, as seen in the latest National Audit Office report.

We are in the middle of the cost of living crisis, as we all know well. Inflation seems to be coming under control; it is only worse in the defence sector, and the proliferation of US dollar-dominated contracts is not going to make things easier, especially with a soft pound and the reality that we are now living in one of the poorest countries in western Europe. Any increase in defence spending at this time means a cut elsewhere in the budget; that is simply a reality. Although there are those, particularly on the Opposition Benches, who are brave enough to say that they would like to make cuts elsewhere to do this, I have seen absolutely no indication from the Government that they intend to do so.

I am no economist—hard to believe, I know—but I believe that practitioners of that special art call it a “revealed preference”. An example would be when a potential leadership candidate advocates spending 3% of GDP, only to quietly drop the commitment when they become Chancellor. All our recent Prime Ministers have made all the right noises when it comes to the problems in international security, but none of them, at least from my perspective, has met that challenge with a significant increase. Indeed, I think we can all agree that if that redoubtable and dogged former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace)—I let him know that I was going to mention him in the debate—was only able to secure an increase to 2.5%, and even then only by the end of the decade, I do not think anyone is expecting his successor to be any more successful.

I should point out—I say this as something of a sceptic about increasing the defence budget or even the value in such arbitrary targets—that we judge Governments based on their record, and this is what this one has. Once we start to scratch at the how in the UK strategy, the what and the why also start to come unstuck. Let us take the Sea Viper order: what was presented as an announcement to counter this new and specific threat has actually been on the table since 2012, only to be constantly shifted to the right because of pressures elsewhere on the budget.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I will give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am grateful, and I regard him as my hon. Friend too. Before he leaves the issue of percentages spent on defence, would he not agree with me that, crude though they are, these are indicators of a national priority? The trouble is that if we do not spend enough on defence in peacetime, and then a conflict breaks out—we are now beginning to hear talk of having to be prepared for major conflict in the next decade or two—we will be spending vastly more than 3% or 4% on defence. So how much better is it to spend a bit more in peacetime to prevent the conflict, and how much better than that is it that America should realise that investing in Ukraine’s effort is also helping to raise the deterrence threshold?

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I both agree and disagree. Had the Ministry made sustained investment in capability, we might not have found ourselves in this situation. The right hon. Gentleman is welcome to stay for my Adjournment debate on nuclear infrastructure, in which we might go into the number crunching in far more detail—he may try to pass on that.

Far from being a simple drone killer, Sea Viper is a sophisticated ballistic missile defence system that has been in development since the 1980s. Each Aster 30 missile costs £2 million a pop. Whoever in the main building thought it was a good idea to call it a drone killer evidently had not done the cost-benefit analysis on taking out mass-produced Chinese drones, costing £100, with a £2 million missile. That is before we even get to the platforms that deliver the capability.

The Minister might be able to correct me, but the MOD is now officially refusing to publicly disclose the size of its escort fleet, which the Houthis probably already know—maybe it is in one of the TikToks that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton mentioned. That refusal got a bit of play last week, although we should consider the why of it all.

If we can all agree that we are living in a world of increasingly complicated and interlinked threats, why is the Red sea important to the UK? I consulted two principal documents published since I became an MP—the 2015 strategic defence and security review and the 2021 integrated review—but, alas, there was no mention of the Red sea. Yemen was given a single cursory mention in each, and both in the context of other regional conflicts. The Government’s defence is that both documents were written before the Ever Given accident reminded us that the Suez canal and the Red sea are an important bottleneck for global trade.

Ultimately, neither document, one pre-Brexit and one post-Brexit, tells a compelling story about UK engagement in that part of the world, which makes it harder for me, and certainly for the public, to see why sustained engagement, if it happens, is in our long-term interest. Do not get me wrong: even as a committed north Atlanticist who believes that the primary commitment of Scotland and the UK should be to our northern European neighbourhood, I am open to being convinced. But the mood music throughout that time was on global Britain, without elucidating what that actually meant.

Do not get me started on the Indo-Pacific tilt either. The integrated review made the incredible assertion that the UK wishes to be the European state

“with the broadest and most integrated presence in the Indo-Pacific”.

That claim received very little interrogation at the time. Again, as a committed north Atlanticist, I was perhaps never going to be on board with the idea of an Indo-Pacific tilt, but the more I try to find out about it, the less convinced I become.

The Indo-Pacific is a big place and is home to two of the three largest oceans in the world and three of the five largest states. Any tilt towards it would surely require some sort of prioritisation, but we have never heard any talk of this. The Red sea region could have been part of that, securing the freedom of maritime trade from the Indo-Pacific and bringing in European partners with a presence in the region, along with others, but there was a complete failure to communicate any of that to Members, never mind to the general public.

Forgive those of us who are sceptical about the what. With the strikes against Houthi targets, we can clearly see the how. The Royal Navy, which is doing a commendable job, is in its poorest and most diminished state for many years. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford alluded to that, and it is a consequence not only of budgetary pressures but of a complete failure of this and previous Governments to make the case for the why, be that in the Red sea or the North sea.

Instead, we have a manpower and retention crisis caused by over a decade of wage stagnation; the ongoing possibility that the two remaining landing platform docks will be mothballed, calling into question the long-term viability of the Royal Marines; and the admission in November that the entire fleet of SSNs was alongside at the same time. Yet if we were going by the MOD’s spin on things, all is well, because we can still field two carrier strike groups, even though everyone knows we would never have the manpower to do so at the same time; the AUKUS deal will allow Astute-class boats to operate in the Pacific ocean, even though, as we have heard, they sometimes cannot even get to the North sea; and—who can forget, from last week—we now have a space laser, or at least we will in 10 or 15 years’ time. So let me end with a general observation: when it comes to UK grand strategy in the Red sea, denial is not just a river you end up in if you take a wrong turn on your way there.

National Security Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Martin Docherty-Hughes

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Lords amendment 22B, accepted by the upper House last Wednesday, 21 June, requires a UK-registered political party to publish a policy statement ensuring the identification of foreign donations and providing the Electoral Commission with an annual statement showing the foreign donations received. This is the second time that the other place has amended the Bill to include such a clause. On behalf of the ISC, I spoke in favour of the previous version of the amendment when the Bill was last in the Commons, and, as Lord West stated on Wednesday, the ISC’s position remains the same: we firmly support the introduction of this provision. It is deeply concerning that the Government continue to oppose it.

In 2020, the ISC’s long-delayed Russia report highlighted the risk of foreign state-linked financial interference in UK politics. There is clearly a threat that needs to be tackled. The Committee on Standards in Public Life, in a major 2021 report on regulating electoral finance, concluded that

“the current rules are insufficient to guard against foreign interference in UK elections.”

That committee also observed that, since 2018, the Electoral Commission has supported the introduction into electoral finance regulation of risk management principles that are used for anti-money laundering checks conducted by companies. This amendment falls into that same category.

Members from both sides of both Houses have previously spoken strongly in support of the Lords amendment and, together with the evidence provided by the ISC, the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Electoral Commission, have clearly set out why it is needed and why the current safeguards in our law are insufficient. By refusing to accept the need to update the law, the Government are rejecting the non-partisan conclusions of both Parliament and the Electoral Commission. They are inexplicably rejecting the opportunity significantly to improve the transparency and accountability of our political system by requiring political parties to take modest but important steps to identify and disclose donations received from foreign sources and states.

The Government claim to oppose this Lords amendment on the basis that the existing protections within electoral law are sufficient; that the amendment would not work in practice; and that it would place an undue burden on grassroots political organisations. Almost everyone else disagrees. The Government rely on the fact that existing electoral financing law requires political parties to check that a donor is “permissible”. Yet that misses the central point: the lack of any requirement for a political party to check the source of the funding.

There is currently no rule that political parties must conduct adequate due diligence on donors—not even donors operating in high-risk countries. Citizens domiciled abroad and companies based in the UK can donate to a political party with no questions asked about the source of the money. That applies even to companies that are making no operating profit. Why should a UK charity, or a UK company, have to undertake enhanced due diligence, under money laundering and terrorist financing law, where a donor is linked to a high-risk country, whereas a political party is exempt from that duty? Political parties surely require the highest level of protection.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

On that point, the hon. Gentleman is clear that even small and medium-sized registered charities, whether they are in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland, have to do as he says. I am absolutely perplexed as to why the Government cannot agree with him and his Committee on why that should not be extended to political parties.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I hope he, like us, will persevere and maybe one day that mystery will be solved. In fact, the amendment does not even represent the highest level of protection. It is a very modest measure that would not place undue burdens on political parties. The Electoral Commission says that such rules could be introduced in a way that recognises the need for proportionality, as we have heard, with different requirements depending on the size of an entity’s financial infrastructure and/or the size of the donation. Guidelines would prevent this amendment, which increases transparency and accountability, from becoming disproportionately onerous.

The fact that due diligence measures are used in the charity sector, and not just by commercial entities, demonstrates that it should be entirely possible for similar steps to be taken by political parties. We know that there is both a threat and a vulnerability. We know that current safeguards are inadequate. This is a modest, sensible and proportionate amendment: the Minister should seize the opportunity by accepting it or proposing his own alternative.