Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

An unclassified summary of the Trident alternative review will be prepared by the Cabinet Office and published as a Government document.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

In January, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury told The Guardian newspaper that the coalition review of Trident would compile a “compelling” list of alternatives. It was suggested in the Financial Times recently that the review will come down on the side of a submarine-based ballistic missile system. In the light of that, will the Secretary of State tell the House when the review will be published, and if it comes down on the side of a submarine-based system, will the Government consider bringing forward the main gate decision into this Parliament?

[Mr Hammond]

I cannot comment on the findings of the review, which is not yet concluded and has not yet reported to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that there is no need to bring forward the 2016 main gate decision point. That decision will be made in 2016, in order to deliver the new submarines into service from 2028, when they are required.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and disappointed that the sole representative of Scottish separatism in the Chamber today had disappeared before we reached this point in proceedings. I have indeed seen the recommendations of the House of Lords report. As my hon. Friend will know, the Government’s position is clear: Scotland benefits from being part of the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom benefits from having Scotland in it. We are confident that the Scottish people will agree. However, in the event that they voted to leave the United Kingdom, the referendum, rather than being the point at which Scotland would leave the Union, would mark the beginning of a lengthy and extremely complex set of negotiations between the Scottish and UK Governments on the terms of independence. If an independent Scotland wanted to change the arrangements for the UK’s nuclear deterrent, the considerable costs, complexity and time scale involved in delivering alternative arrangements would inevitably be a major feature of the negotiations. It is therefore incorrect to suggest the need for an immediately deliverable contingency plan for the deterrent. However, the House will be aware that the MOD plans for a huge range of contingencies. For reasons of national security, we do not comment publicly on plans relating to the nuclear deterrent.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The MOD underspent its budget by £3 billion last year: a total of £1.6 billion is being carried forward, and there is now a shortfall of £1.4 billion up to 2015. Further to the question asked earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), can the Secretary of State tell the House why the MOD is not using some of that money to backdate the pay increase from May to April announced in the Budget?

[Mr Hammond]

A significant proportion of the underspend in 2012-13 is, in fact, the result of delayed spending on equipment programmes and will be needed to be spent in 2013-14 and 2014-15. As the hon. Gentleman will also know, part of the underspend is being used to meet the additional reductions in the budget announced by the Chancellor in the autumn statement and the Budget, which is why we are able to meet those requirements without cutting into the delivery of our core outputs in 2013-14 and 2014-15. To amplify the point about the pay settlement that is effective from 1 May, I will say this: the practical reality is that the MOD’s pay system is quite fragile, and the possibility of making a retrospective change was considered significantly high-risk. It would introduce a significant risk of a catastrophic breakdown in the pay system. We therefore—

Army Basing Plan

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I hope the document that has been distributed will answer some of the right hon. Gentleman’s questions, particularly about providing the certainty that personnel and their families will want in terms of where they are going and when they are going to go there. I note that his references at the beginning of his remarks about multi-role brigades and the subsequent evolution of the Army force to match the resources available made no reference whatever to the legacy that we inherited from the previous Government, which has been one of the key drivers in our efforts to deal with the challenges ahead.

Let me try to deal with some of the right hon. Gentleman’s perfectly legitimate questions. He asked me about the £1.8 billion capital spend. Essentially, he sought assurance that this money had not been found at the expense of the budget for employing our forces. It is, of course, a capital budget quite separate from the resource departmental expenditure limit budgets of the Department and it is largely a budget that was in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation’s capital spend programme, supplemented by some of the capital underspend from last year, which we have been allowed to carry forward.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It will be taken away from Army housing.

Maritime Surveillance

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Thomas Docherty]

It feels like yesterday, I am sure, to many in the MOD. I had the pleasure of serving with the Minister in the Armed Forces Bill Committee when he was merely an Under-Secretary, and I thank him for the letter that he kindly sent me this morning on another matter; I am most grateful that we could resolve the issue. Obviously, he is not directly responsible for many of the decisions, or the comments made by the MOD on the report; but of course he believes in collective responsibility, and I am sure that he will be happy to respond in relation to his predecessor’s comments and to our observations. I have a huge amount of time for the Minister’s predecessor, who was very able and sound, which is probably why the Deputy Prime Minister got rid of him in the Liberal Democrat reshuffle.

Without a doubt, as we said on the acquisition report earlier this week, many decisions in the lead-up to the SDSR were rushed and not fully thought through. Thinking was not done for the long term. With a little charity towards the Government, I must say that the programme is probably the finest example of how not to procure. Four parties each bear some responsibility. First, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who played no part in the decision when he was at the Ministry of Defence, will accept that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) and other colleagues over the years perhaps did not provide enough scrutiny of the acquisition process.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend must remember that the contract was procured under the previous Conservative Government. If I remember rightly, when I was on the Select Committee, we produced a report suggesting that it should have been cancelled back in the early 2000s. I think that I moved the amendment.

[Thomas Docherty]

As I said, I know that my hon. Friend played no part in the decision to proceed. I cannot quite remember who was the Minister responsible for acquisition in the previous Conservative Government, but perhaps it will come back to me later in the debate.

Not just Ministers need to take some responsibility for mistakes; Ministry of Defence officials and the Royal Air Force need to take some, too. There was an 86% change in the aircraft specification from the time of commissioning under that previous Minister and October 2010. Mr Brady, you worked in industry prior to coming to the House. You know that making that amount of change to a project means that costs will go up and it will be delayed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

I am very conscious that the title of this debate is “Maritime Surveillance” rather than “Acquisition”; I suspect that we may well seek a broader debate on acquisition. Let me just say to the Minister—again, I thank him for his career-helpful advice and praise—that maritime surveillance, as the Committee has so clearly identified, is not a “like” or a “nice to have”. It is absolutely essential.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am intrigued by the Minister’s intervention on my hon. Friend. Is that not exactly what the Government did when they came into power in May 2010? They added up every piece of equipment in the future equipment programme, which covered 10 years and not one year, and somehow assumed that that is where we get to the figure of the black hole.

[Thomas Docherty]

That is entirely what happened. Let us just remind ourselves that the so-called black hole is a single line from a National Audit Office report from before the 2010 general election that said—

[Mr Jones]

It was in 2009.

[Thomas Docherty]

Indeed. I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. It said that if there was no increase in defence equipment spending during the next decade and all the current programmes went ahead, that would create a £38 billion black hole.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry, but it did not actually say that. It said £36 billion. I do not know where the extra £2 billion came from.

[Thomas Docherty]

Well, I cannot possibly comment on the sums. However, that principle of not committing to a future increase in spending is exactly what this Government have done. We saw it again yesterday at Prime Minister’s questions, when the Prime Minister, in response to what was not the most difficult question from the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire, the Chairman of the Defence Committee—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady.

I congratulate the Defence Committee on producing the report. I agree with the comments about the Committee. I was a member for seven and a half years, and it is a consensual Committee that does a lot of good work on a cross-party basis. I concur with the remarks about the Committee’s current Chairman, although I remember that, when I left the Committee to become a Minister, he said that my leaving was a bit like toothache—missed when it is gone.

The report covers an important issue that many Members have talked about today. As the Chairman and others have argued, the threats are wide. We are a maritime nation, and we depend on open sea lanes for trade and security. As a former Defence Minister, I am aware of the threats to our independent nuclear deterrent. The idea that, somehow, the end of the cold war means that Russia has gone away is incorrect. A maritime surveillance capability is vital to our defence needs, and not only because of the issues outlined by the Chairman of the Select Committee.

[Sandra Osborne]

What is my hon. Friend’s attitude to Lord Browne’s comments? Does he think we can afford a like-for-like replacement for Trident, or should we consider another system?

[Mr Jones]

I have read Lord Browne’s articles with great interest. I consider him a friend, but the weakness of his argument in The Daily Telegraph is that he makes a point about alternatives without giving one.

A maritime surveillance capability, as the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) said, is vital to ensuring that we know the location of threats to our independent nuclear deterrent. From personal experience, I know the importance that the Ministry of Defence places on ensuring that any threats to our independent nuclear deterrent and our nation are taken very seriously.

Having read the report, I do not think there is disagreement between the Committee and the Government. Uniquely, there is agreement between the Government, the Committee and the National Audit Office that the decision in the 2010 strategic defence and security review was wrong. In a minute I will address why I think the decision was taken, because the contribution from the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) is enlightening.

Yes, mistakes were made in the discussions on Nimrod. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman criticised BAE Systems because, as he said, he is referred to in many parlours as the “Member for BAE Systems.” On this occasion, he has been frank and clear in his criticism of the company.

The mistakes made in the early days were like trying to turn a 1962 Mini Cooper into today’s model with the same frame. That was highlighted by the reports on the project from when I was a member of the Defence Committee. Was there a time to pull out of the contract? Yes, I think there was. Our report from the early 2000s suggested that there should have been that option. When spending public money, we get to a point where people think, “A little bit more might get this done.” In hindsight, had there been some revision of the project in the early 2000s, Conservative Members would rightly have thrown criticism at us for wasting large amounts of public money. Making the decision earlier might have led to a capability being in place today.

There is no disagreement that there is a capability gap. The report states:

“The National Audit Office’s (NAO) Ministry of Defence Major Projects Report 2011 considered the capability gaps left by the…MRA4 decision. The NAO Report said that according to the MoD, the Nimrod contributed to eight out of the 15…priority risks set out in the National Security Strategy. It added that the Nimrod was uniquely able to rapidly search large maritime areas, a capability relevant to long range search and rescue, maritime counter-terrorism, gathering strategic intelligence and protecting the nuclear deterrent. The NAO Report further said that the MoD had carried out studies in the lead up to the SDSR to assess the capability gap from cancelling the Nimrod MRA4 and the MoD ‘assessed that cancelling Nimrod would have consequences for the military tasks that the aircraft was expected to undertake, some of them severe’. The Report also outlined the capability gaps”.

[Mr Robathan]

I was not involved in defence before the general election, but I understand that the MR2 was retired from service in March 2010, when the hon. Gentleman was a Minister. That is when the capability gap started, because there was no maritime reconnaissance aircraft from that day forwards. Is that correct?

[Mr Jones]

The important point is that the earlier decision on the MRA4 should have been reviewed. We would then have avoided the capability gap.

I remember that at the time we were facing an Opposition who were calling not only for larger armies, more ships and more aircraft, but for an increased defence budget. I am sure that if we had decided to cancel some of the things that they have subsequently cancelled, they and their allies at the time on The Sun would have given us a harder ride than they have had in recent years.

The NAO report sets out that

“limited analysis was carried out on how specific military tasks could be covered”

by a combination of the various options. The report continues:

“However, the Department noted that there would be ‘significant shortfalls without significant investment, and the co-ordination of such assets at the right place and the right time’”.

There is no disagreement that the Government have created that major capability gap. Worse, there is no solution to fill that gap. I agree with the hon. Member for Aldershot that we are relying heavily on our allies. I pay tribute not only to the Norwegians but to the US and others that are helping us with that capability.

The next question is why was the decision taken? Again, I am interesting in what the hon. Gentleman said: the decision had to be taken because of the mythical £38 billion black hole. I notice Ministers sometimes use that figure, but sometimes they do not. We must recognise that those decisions had to be taken because of the 9% cut in the defence budget introduced by the SDSR. The decisions were not strategic; they were budgetary. Knowing the defence budget as I do, there are only two simple ways to take out in-year cash. The first is to take out capability, as happened here, and, for example, with the Harriers. The second is to sack people, which has happened over the past few years.

I have never figured out where the £38 billion figure came from, even though my parliamentary colleagues, the Public Accounts Committee, the Defence Committee and I have asked for explanations. We have been promised explanations that we have never received. I suspect the figure came from the 2009 NAO report, but that was on the equipment budget.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) said, it gets to £36 billion only if everything in the programme is included, flat cash, for 10 years. Adding the inflation rise meant £6 billion. As the hon. Member for Aldershot knows, as he has admitted this afternoon, there might be aspirations in the equipment programme, but that does not mean it will all be delivered. Some things come out and others go in.

The weakness of the current situation is that the Secretary of State claims to have balanced the budget but, so far as I can see, that refers only to the equipment budget, rather than the remaining 55%. If he has been so good at plugging a £38 billion black hole within months, he and his predecessor, who made the same claim, should not be in the Ministry of Defence, but in the Treasury. We need some honesty.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman is being slightly unfair. When I entered the Department, I said to the then Secretary of State that the first thing we had to do was regain the confidence of the Treasury. When the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues left, the Treasury had no confidence in the Ministry of Defence. By the time the current Secretary of State made a statement last July, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was sitting next to him on the Front Bench, indicating that we had reached an accommodation with the Treasury. It is vital that the Ministry of Defence has that accommodation with the paymaster. The hon. Gentleman may not like, I may not like it, but it is a fact of life in this country.

[Mr Jones]

I am not surprised at that. I have dealt with the Treasury myself when in the Ministry of Defence. The current Secretary of State is doing the Treasury’s bidding, no doubt. What I am about to say might sound strange: at least the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), the former Secretary of State, actually argued for defence and got into disagreements. To be fair to him, he tried his best on that decision. The whole problem with the SDSR was that it put the Treasury in the driving seat. My experience of dealing with Treasury officials about our budget when I was a Minister was that they had limited knowledge and understanding of how defence works in practice. That is one of the weaknesses: letting the lion into the room, with very little understanding of how defence works.

[Thomas Docherty]

On the point of being Treasury-driven, we mentioned the deterrent several times. Is my hon. Friend as surprised as me that, in a written answer to me last year, the Treasury stated that, although leading the review of the deterrent, its representatives had not once set foot in the MOD building, and that not one single admiral or air marshal had gone across to the Cabinet Office to see them?

[Mr Jones]

That does not surprise me at all. If we had more time, I could bore Members with some of the ludicrous ideas that were presented to me when I was a Minister by the Treasury, showing a lack of understanding.

The Ministry of Defence claims to have balanced the budget, even though we do not know what is on the whiteboard. The Minister said again this afternoon that he is not prepared to tell us what is on the whiteboard. Is the replacement on there, yes or no? Is, for example, Sentinel, another very important piece of kit, on the whiteboard? Even though it has been deployed to Mali, the Secretary of State indicated in Defence questions the other day that it will somehow be reprieved. If so, what is coming off the budget? Last week’s NAO report said that the £8 billion put aside in reserve may not be enough even to cover the risk in the existing programme. The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) keeps asking at Defence questions for that whiteboard. Until we get to see that and what is actually in the equipment budget, there is no way of telling when the capability will be put forward.

When the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) came before the Committee, he was clear that there was no money or indication to replace this capability until 2015. There are unanswered questions. There is clearly a capability gap; the Government admit that. The Committee and the NAO report identified that. No solution has been put forward to resolve that.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

Would the shadow Minister tell us whether the Leader of the Opposition is committed to increasing defence spending year-on-year in real terms after 2015?

[Mr Jones]

I am surprised by the right hon. Gentleman. He is usually non-partisan in such matters. If we do not know what is on the whiteboard, what the budget is or the state of the remaining 55% of the budget, it is difficult to make that determination. The Government made claims last week when they got the figures mixed up and did not understand that the 1% applies only to the equipment budget, not the remaining 55%. Even the NAO report says that that might be swallowed up just by the risk in the existing programme. We need to know such things. Until we do, it is difficult to know what will be capable of replacing this piece of kit.

It has been a good debate, which shows the cross-party nature of the Defence Committee at its best. However, the Government, with the short-sighted decisions they took in the SDSR, among many others, have created a huge capability gap that I fear will have strategic implications for the nation for many years.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. Of course, the Conservative parliamentary party always serves under your chairmanship.

I begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) on the work he and his Committee have done in this area. Since we are all being nice to those who help us, I add my thanks to the huge number of serving personnel and civil servants who came to fill in one or two knowledge gaps in my portfolio. I have already made that point. They have come along to see whether they have repaired the gaps in my knowledge, and I think they did.

This is an important and wide-ranging subject and it is right to give it serious attention. As has already been pointed out, maritime security is vital to the defence of our nation and our interests around the world. The military and non-military dimensions of maritime surveillance are key elements. We highlighted our position as an open, outward-facing island nation in the national security strategy and placed an emphasis on surveillance and intelligence in the SDSR. Put simply, we cannot protect ourselves against existing and anticipated threats if we do not understand and cannot detect them. Doing so successfully requires a range of capable platforms and sensors, highly trained personnel and procedures to ensure effective action is taken on the information they provide.

The geography of the United Kingdom means that we are dependent on the sea for our economic prosperity. Maritime security and surveillance underpins our trade: the vast majority of our imports and exports are transported by sea. As much as 90% of world trade is carried by sea, so we not only need to secure our own territorial waters but to contribute to protecting key global sea lanes and our vital interests overseas.

I think everybody here would agree that we also wish to be able to project military power with our allies through the use of expeditionary forces. We rely again on maritime surveillance assets to protect those forces wherever they are deployed. Closer to home, the Government have responsibility to protect our people, our borders and our exclusive economic zone. I have always said that the first duty of Government is the defence of the realm. That requires that the different agencies charged with doing so—the police, borders, immigration, intelligence agencies, coastguard, Department for Transport, search and rescue providers and the armed forces—have the capabilities they need and work closely together.

None the less, hon. Members will be well aware that we did not start on firm financial ground in planning for the future. The parlous state of the defence budget inherited from the previous Government and the overheated and unrealistic equipment plan meant that hard decisions had to be taken. I am not going to engage again with the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is in denial, yet he was a Minister in the previous Government and knew what the situation was. He remains in denial and we have had this conversation before.

I understand that the Secretary of State has written to the shadow Secretary of State detailing exactly what the situation was.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

No.

[Mr Robathan]

If he has not, I will come back to the hon. Gentleman and ensure he gets a response. It is also the case that the parlous state of the nation’s finances is visible for all to see. Yet, instead of having any guilt about it, he sits and smiles and says it is not true and that everything was going swimmingly, as the previous Government in a profligate manner distributed money everywhere and left us in this ghastly situation that none of us enjoys.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Robathan]

I have told the hon. Gentleman that I will not engage with him again, because we have done it before and he is in denial. One cannot have military or economic security based on unsustainable defence spending. The Soviet Union found that out. That is why we took a number of difficult decisions during the SDSR, including the decision not to bring the Nimrod MRA4 into service.

At the beginning of the debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire said that he did not wish to concentrate on Nimrod, but I am afraid that it has been largely about Nimrod, which I will therefore have to deal with in some detail. I asked the officials present—this huge number of serving personnel and civil servants—at what date the original Nimrod decision was taken, so I knew before his confession that it was, sadly, taken under the previous Conservative Government.

We should not forget the background to the decision to cancel Nimrod. There were no maritime reconnaissance aircraft flying in the RAF when we came into government. We did not create the capability gap—the capability did not exist. Owing to cost growth in the programme, the original plan to convert 21 airframes for the MRA4 had by 2010 been scaled back to only nine. The in-service date had been delayed from 2003 to 2012, costs had none the less risen from £2.8 billion to £3.6 billion, there were still outstanding technical problems which would have taken further large sums of money to solve and we knew that it would cost about £2 billion to operate over the next decade. While the capability’s role in support of anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, strategic intelligence gathering, and search and rescue remained important, in a financially constrained environment dominated by the operations in Afghanistan among other threats, it made the most military and financial sense to discontinue the programme, however unhappy that made us.

I was particularly interested in the comments of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife. I joined the armed forces in 1970 and, during my time in the Army and in Parliament since, I have seen a long list of poor procurement projects—[Interruption.] That is the Leader of the Opposition ringing. Out of a litany of procurement disasters, as the hon. Gentleman said, this has been one of the worst. It was more than nine years late, each aircraft was to cost three times the original amount and we still had not finished. We did not where the programme was going, there was no end in sight and we were not asked to throw good money after bad. I am afraid that that decision, much as it is regretted, was the right one.

BTEC (Public Uniformed Services)

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown)on initiating the debate. I am very pleased to have his heartfelt endorsement of our cadet units, particularly in view of his extraordinarily long service with Walker technology college. Serving as a governor since 1980 is extraordinary. It is very good to hear how well the BTEC to which he refers and cadet forces in general—the cadet experience—have helped improve the lives of young people. I am very grateful also for his iteration of Mr Dunlop’s testimony. It is my experience, too, that the opinion of teachers who may be a little sceptical about involvement in the cadets is often turned around once they have experience of the work that cadet volunteers do to help young people. It is always good to hear such stories.

It is worth while putting on record that one of the great things about youth in this country is the presence among them of our cadet organisations. I know that the right hon. Gentleman does not need to be convinced of that. Broadly speaking, they fall into four parts: the Combined Cadet Force, of which more anon if I have the opportunity, the Army Cadet Force, the Air Training Corps and one that is particularly close to my heart—the Sea Cadet Corps. There are 140,000 cadets in more than 3,000 units. It is worth while putting on record our thanks to the 26,000 cadet force adult volunteers, who make all this possible.

Some 530 units are based in schools across the country, either as an integral part of the school or using them simply as hired venues. Schools that have set up cadet units have seen significant benefits for their young people, their school and the local community. Students learn self-discipline, resilience and leadership, but also develop a sense of community and teamwork. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is aware of the research done by the universities of Southampton and Portsmouth, which studied cadet forces and found that 92% agreed that their leadership skills had improved through being in the cadets; 91% agreed that being in the cadets had made them want to do well in life; 91% agreed that being in the cadets had taught them to respect other people; 90% said that being in the cadets had given them a sense of community; and, very importantly, 79% agreed that being in the cadets had helped them stay out of trouble.

I think that that is impressive, and that is why we and the Department for Education are working together to deliver 100 new cadet units in state-funded schools in England by 2015 and working hard to break down the apartheid that regrettably has existed as far as the CCF is concerned between the maintained sector and public schools. Building on the Government’s Positive for Youth agenda, the Departments have allocated £10.85 million to provide the equipment and training support needed to ensure that the cadet experience is maintained for all our cadets, with schools or sponsors then paying the running costs of those new units; I shall come back to what I mean by “the cadet experience”. That is about increasing opportunities for more young people: the skills that they learn and the personal qualities that they develop as cadets prepare them for entry into the work force and life in general. We all, as constituency MPs, have seen that in practice.

In some parts of the UK, our cadets are the only presence in military uniform. Most of us who represent constituencies will be well aware of the activities of our cadets locally. We see them, particularly on parade on Remembrance Sunday. I am very pleased to note, in my capacity as the Prime Minister’s special representative for the commemoration of the great war, that they are already limbering up to take a very active and obvious role in local commemorations of that conflict. They are, for example, taking part in In Memoriam 2014, the War Memorials Trust effort, supported by the SmartWater Foundation, to find, record and protect every war memorial in the country by 2014.

The cadet experience varies depending on the cadet force, as it is founded in the particular environment of the parent service, with, for example, flying being the unique selling point of the Air Cadets—a point I remember well from my own schooldays. Sadly, I did not get much flying, but I got a great deal of marching. Things have, I believe, changed. It is that cadet experience, not external qualifications, that the Ministry of Defence funds. Cadets do, however, have the opportunity to gain all sorts of qualifications, whether it is a first aid certificate, a Duke of Edinburgh’s award or one of a number of BTECs. That is a valuable by-product of the MOD-funded cadet experience.

The majority of BTECs awarded to cadets are in public services, with the Cadet Vocational Qualification Organisation delivering an Edexcel qualification, as the right hon. Gentleman knows. Other level 2 BTECs available to cadets include music and engineering. Like all BTECs, these focus on practical vocational learning. The partnership between the cadet forces and CVQO is more than 12 years old. CVQO was founded to give cadets the chance of explaining their service in a way that employers could readily understand. However, it should be recognised that the BTEC qualification is an outcome of cadet service, not an output, and the MOD cannot provide funding to pay for an educational qualification. Cadet service alone is not sufficient to receive the BTEC. Some 30% of the work needed to receive the qualification is done outside the cadet unit.

Although almost 1,400 Army Cadets have received a level 2 BTEC in public services from CVQO in the last academic year, that is quite a small number when we consider that almost 11,500 first aid certificates were awarded to Army Cadets in the same year. The BTEC is important but only one of many options open to cadets.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I know the Walker school very well as a former councillor for the area. Does the Minister agree that what the cadet force does there is keep certain pupils in education and give them life chances that they would not get if it were not for the cadet experience?

[Dr Murrison]

Yes, I agree absolutely with that. The research done by the universities of Southampton and Portsmouth, which I have cited, is germane to that. Certainly, expanding the range of options, particularly vocational options, that kids are able to take up at school when they might be alienated from straightforward academic subjects is very important. However, I will go on to talk about some of the characteristics that the Department for Education believes are necessary in order to qualify a BTEC for inclusion in league tables. It is important to emphasise that the MOD does not fund the BTEC qualification. It is funded from either Education or charitable sources.

Nuclear Deterrent

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Most Members will be aware of this, but for the record I should like to state that I firmly believe in our nuclear deterrent. In this uncertain world where countries that are not necessarily friendly to the west have nuclear weapons, it is an unfortunate fact of life that we need them as well to guarantee Britain’s safety. However, that does not stop us also working towards arms reduction. When President Obama launched his global zero initiative, I very much welcomed it. We also owe a debt of thanks to the Royal Navy and our Vanguard submariners, who are always on patrol, for safeguarding the country and providing the essential British contribution to NATO.

I want to suggest that our commitment to our nuclear deterrent should not just be about the current capability and future plans. There is a legacy from the dawn of our deterrent that we have still not yet fully recognised. We have to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to another group of people, who also deserve our recognition and thanks, without whom Britain would never have joined the top tier of nuclear powers. They are, of course, our nuclear test veterans.

In the 1950s and 1960s, in the largest tri-service operation since the D-day landings, 20,000 service personnel participated in British nuclear weapon tests in the south Pacific and Australia. These men’s service was unique. When they took part, the science was largely unknown. Pre-test precautions were primitive and inadequate and failed to protect individuals fully from the effects of heat, blast shock and ionising radiation. Many veterans believe that their health was adversely affected by those tests, a view substantiated by scientific research undertaken in New Zealand by Professor Rowland that was peer-reviewed and accepted by the then New Zealand Government.

Some years ago, following an inquiry from a constituent, I became involved with the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association and I am now its patron. After a long campaign, the BNTVA and I succeeded in persuading the Ministry of Defence to undertake a health needs analysis of all surviving veterans. It showed that 84% of them believed that their main health condition was caused by radiation. If anybody thinks that that was an easy task and analysis to accomplish, they have not dealt with the MOD, but I thank it for taking that on.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It was me.

[Mr Baron]

To a certain extent, yes.

Many helpful, practical measures are now being introduced as a result—for example, small but important things such as markers denoting veteran status on NHS records.

Following the success of the health needs analysis, the BNTVA and I recently started a new campaign with three objectives. The first is to secure a lasting legacy for these men and their descendants. There is still much to learn about the effects of exposure to radiation and how we can continue to make nuclear energy safe. The second is to secure public recognition from the Prime Minister of our debt to these veterans. That could include recognition through the medal system by adding a clasp to the general service medal. The third is to establish a benevolent fund courtesy of Government, the suggested figure being £25 million. This would support atomic veterans and, more importantly, their descendants, who have also suffered medical setbacks that can be attributed to their fathers’ exposure.

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[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Baron]

If I am allowed a second intervention that will add another minute to my speech, then by all means.

[Mr Jones]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I was pleased to put in place the health study, against the opposition of a lot of the civil service, when I was a Defence Minister. A generous settlement proposal was put to the lawyers—I got the Treasury to agree to it—but it was rejected. That was an opportunity missed for veterans to get some compensation.

[Mr Baron]

I recognise the part that the hon. Gentleman played in the health needs analysis. However, let us be absolutely clear about a confusion that is all too readily accepted by the MOD: the BNTVA has never participated in the legal cases that some individual veterans have brought. That is a vital distinction to make and I ask the House to take it on board.

Although £25 million sounds like a lot of money, we should set it in the context of how other nuclear countries have treated their veterans. The US gives each veteran £47,000 plus a further £47,000 for any secondary attributable illness. No causal link is required between the cancer suffered by the veteran and the fact that they were there. If they were at the tests and they have cancer, they automatically get the compensation. Canada pays more than £15,000 in addition to money, from pensions and compensation legislation. The Isle of Man makes an ex gratia payment of £8,000 to any resident test veteran.

In all three cases, the service personnel in question have access to free health care provision. The MOD argument that veterans in this country have access to the NHS therefore does not stack up. The fact remains that this country’s nuclear test veterans are almost at the bottom of the scale in the international comparisons going by how they are treated by this country. I hope that the House will accept that that needs to be put right. Against those comparisons, the campaign for £25 million, which works out at about £6,000 per veteran, is modest.

I should at this stage repeat what I said to the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and make it clear that the BNTVA has never participated in the legal challenges brought by some veterans.

We have had several meetings at the MOD with successive Ministers for veterans. I wrote to the Government in November to set out the details of our campaign. Despite chase-ups, I still await a response. No doubt the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), will carry that message back to the MOD. Meanwhile, I have written to all Back Benchers requesting their support for our campaign for recognition. As the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) mentioned, many have been kind enough to write back positively. I will be taking the matter further in due course.

In conclusion, as the Government are on the verge of commissioning the next iteration of our nuclear deterrent, it is right that we remember those who first created it and finally, after so long, repay the debt that we owe them.

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[Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)]

The UK must decide by the middle of 2016—just three years from now—whether to proceed with a like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear deterrent. I do not believe we need a further generation of nuclear weapons based on the scale we thought we needed in 1980 at the height of the cold war, and I do not believe we can afford to have one. I do not believe that national security assessment and strategy suggest we need it, or that our defence posture can stand it—our posture would become lop-sided if we were to commit to another generation on the same scale. In addition, I believe that the opportunity cost of committing so much money and manpower, and such a large proportion of our equipment budget, would have a malign effect on our general military capability.

In 1980, at the height of the cold war, we had a known nuclear adversary—the Soviet Union. It had British targets in its target set, and we had Soviet targets in our target set. There was a logic—I do not say that I necessarily subscribe to it hook, line and sinker—to having continuous at-sea deterrence, because we had a known adversary. Today’s circumstances are very different. At that time, we computed that the only way to fulfil the classic definition of deterrence—to put into one’s adversary’s mind the certainty that we were capable of inflicting damage that would be unacceptable to him—was to maintain the capability of overcoming Moscow’s nuclear defences and being able to flatten that city. Moscow was where the Soviet elite hung out and the only things that they valued, and to which they considered damage would be unacceptable, were themselves and their regime. The Russia of the 21st century, for all its imperfections, is very different. It is perfectly possible to deter modern Russia from a nuclear attack on us by a variety of other means, and there are other ways of inflicting on them damage that they would consider unacceptable.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Why then have the Russians recently upgraded their anti-ballistic missile protection in and around Moscow?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I did not say that they would be willing to see Moscow flattened—most certainly they would not. I am saying that there are other ways of inflicting damage on Russia that it would consider unacceptable.

I mentioned that there will be a vast opportunity cost to be paid if we decide to commit these funds, which, let us refresh our memories, in today’s money will be approximately £25 billion to £30 billion on the capital investment in a further generation of submarines. On top of that, we have to factor in the running costs of a nuclear deterrent on this scale for 30 or more years of through-life costs—more than £3 billion a year in today’s money. Beginning to total that out and factoring in decommissioning at the end, we are talking about an expenditure of more than £100 billion. We need to look closely at whether that is justified in the context of the size of our defence budget, and what we are able to make available for other forms of defence and security in an increasingly dangerous and changing world.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I start by paying tribute to members of our armed forces and their families for the work they do. In the context of this debate, I particularly commend members of the Royal Navy who work on our independent nuclear deterrent. I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on securing this important debate about the cornerstone of our nation’s security.

The security landscape today is both uncertain and unpredictable. New threats such as cyber-warfare and biological terrorism exist alongside the conventional threats. In response, we must have a broad, advanced equipment programme that enables us not only to detect, but to deter and tackle the whole spectrum of threats we face as a nation.

We on the Labour Benches are clear that an independent nuclear deterrent is in our national interest. It has been argued, and it has been repeated today, that our nuclear deterrent was a cold war legacy. It is correct that many of the old divisions of the cold war have gone, but they have been replaced with new uncertainties: the recent unrest in Pakistan, advanced missile testing in North Korea and the intractable problem of Iran. Although it is impossible to predict the future, the one thing that is certain is that it is unpredictable. All that shows how important it is for the United Kingdom to retain an independent nuclear deterrent.

In 2007, Parliament took the view—supported by the Labour Government of the day—that a submarine-based system with ballistic missiles provided for the minimum credible nuclear deterrent, and was the most-effective model to meet our strategic needs. It is also our stated objective to play an active and constructive role in international efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. There is no evidence that a unilateralist posture would advance that goal.

The United Kingdom is a proud and prominent signatory to the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. That treaty has three pillars, through which we must view our nuclear deterrent: non-proliferation, disarmament, and facilitation of the peaceful use of nuclear technology. That is why I am proud that the last Labour Government reduced the size of the nuclear stockpile. We cut the number of operationally available warheads from 300 at the time of the 1998 strategic defence review to fewer than 160 by the time of the 2010 general election, reduced the number of warheads carried per submarine from 96 to 48, and withdrew the WE177 nuclear capability from service. I believe that it should be a cross-party priority for the UK to continue on that path towards nuclear disarmament, alongside our international allies.

It is essential for our decisions on the future of the deterrent to be based on evidence and on what is in our national interest rather than on any political-party interest. We are therefore committed to examining any new evidence rigorously in order to establish whether there are alternatives to the conclusions of the last review in 2006. That examination must feature two priorities, capability and cost: they must be our guiding principles. We want the UK to have the minimum credible deterrent, in line with our national security needs and our international obligations, and we want to ensure that we achieve maximum value for money. All options must be examined, and we look forward to close examination of the Government’s review of alternatives. I consider that to be a responsible and rational approach.

While we must insist on rigorous policy-making, we fear that the review is an exercise in Liberal Democrat and Conservative party management rather than the management of our national interest. We question the validity of a review that has lasted more than two years, and whose conclusions the Prime Minister rejected before it even began.

The president of the Liberal Democrats says that he wants to make the review an election issue, so why is it being run from the Cabinet Office at the taxpayer’s expense? Can it have any credibility, given that the Liberal Democrats opted out of ministerial responsibility for defence and foreign affairs, and given that the person in charge of the review, the right hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander), does not even have a pass allowing him to enter the MOD’s main building?

The real test of the review, however, should be not whether it allows the Government parties to indulge in a strategy of differentiation, but whether it explores in sufficient detail and depth what is—as has already been explained—an inherently complex and technical subject. If it appears to promote an alternative as an end point in itself, it will have not just failed all those who seek a genuine debate, but punctured the Government’s claim to have credibility on this vital issue.

There are a number of potential alternatives to the current nuclear deterrent, which I hope the review will explore. Let me briefly comment on each of them.

The first option is an air-based system. It was considered to be the most costly option of all in the 2006 review, requiring the procurement of new aircraft, a new missile and new operating bases. In addition, its visibility would increase its vulnerability. The estimated cost of the second option—a land-based silo system—is double that of the current submarine-based system. It has also been questioned on strategic grounds, as it is immobile and unconcealable, and therefore vulnerable to attack. Any review would also need to address where the system would be located. I am not sure there would be many volunteers to have that based in their constituency. Thirdly, any consideration of a surface ship-based system would also need to cast aside doubts about vulnerability and detectability. Fourthly, the review will need to focus on a submarine-based system armed with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The costs of this option will need to be examined closely, including the cost of developing a new warhead independently from our US allies. Also, Astutes would have to be adapted or another platform would need to be procured, which could result in a lessening of our current hunter-killer capability. Concern has also been expressed that arming submarines with dual-use cruise missiles could prove escalatory during a crisis, as our enemies would not know whether the submarine was a conventional or nuclear-armed vessel.

International factors must also be considered, such as compliance with the nuclear test-ban treaty, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the USA’s 2010 nuclear posture review. If we were to go down the cruise missile route, we would need more warheads in order to penetrate targets and it could be argued that that would break one of those treaties.

I do not have time to cover every detail, but we do need to have a meaningful discussion—a function today’s debate is fulfilling. This is a delicate topic that sparks strong passions, even within parties. That is why an evidence-based approach free from political positioning is so important. We will consider the technical, military, security and financial issues, and look closely at all the details of the Government’s alternatives review. For Opposition Members, the facts that support our national security needs will always be our focus.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and say in passing that I look forward to visiting the Newark patriotic fund in his constituency later this week. On the question about incentives, I hope that the House will forgive me if again I pray in aid the White Paper. We are considering the issue as we prepare our plan, which we will lay out in the spring, and I can assure him that we are mindful of his point.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

We know that the Government are reducing the size of the regular Army, with the constant issuing of redundancy notices to members of our armed forces. There is clearly a concern that there will be a gap between regular service personnel and the new plans for reservists coming into place. How confident is the Minister that reservists will be able to meet those demands and that he can get employers to release reservists covered by the present legislation?

[Mr Francois]

I hope that I have already mentioned the point about legislation in an earlier answer. With regard to numbers, we continue to manage the growth in the Army reserve and the reduction in regular numbers closely. Beyond the end of operations in Afghanistan, these trajectories will be kept under close review to ensure that we can take early action to maintain an appropriate force level to meet our planning assumptions.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Leigh—for the first time, I think—if only because you have given the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) a history lesson.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) on securing this important debate. She has brought to it the same level of expertise and knowledge that we are lucky enough to draw on in the Defence Committee, where she is also a voice of moderation and reason.

The history of warfare is one of innovation and, some would argue, progress, although I am not sure that the latter view is always valid. No one is clear about which of the city states was the first to deploy ballistic weapons, but it is fair to say that those were first used to great effect by the Romans in defeating the Greek hoplite phalanxes between 300 BC and 100 BC; it was the first time that stand-off weapons were used on a large scale. To pick up the point eloquently made by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire, at that point stand-off weapons were still limited by the kinetic capacity of the thrower or archer.

The first recorded use of gunpowder on the battlefield was in the 13th century. It was used in—I will try to pronounce this correctly, Mr Leigh; I am sure that you will correct me if I get it wrong—Ain Jalut in south-east Galilee by the Egyptian Mamluks against the Mongols; my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) was there at the time and will correct me if I am wrong. The Chinese are known to have invented gunpowder, although we do not have an earlier record of their use of it on the battlefield.

The Mamluks in Ain Jalut represent the first recorded use of hand cannons, and they were the first to cause the Mongol horsemen to turn back on their ride westwards. That is significant because it is the first recorded indication that the capacity for ballistic weapon use need not be limited by the human kinetic ability to pull or throw.

We then go forward to the 16th century and the decline in the use of pikes and halberds. Until the middle of the 17th century—probably the end of the civil wars in the British Isles and slightly later in continental Europe—the pike is still the weapon of choice for generals for turning the tide of battle. By the middle of the 17th century, pikes are in decline and there is the rise of the musketmen.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I think my hon. Friend has inadvertently forgotten the effectiveness of the archers. [Interruption.]

[Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

We want no obscene gestures.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Leigh. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) on securing the debate.

Any debate on the deployability of UAVs should be determined by military requirements, by the ethics of the conflict and, above all, by facts. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) that some of the supposed facts that are being circulated are getting in the way of the proper debate that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston initiated.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) mentioned Afghanistan, and I would like to put on record our admiration for, and thanks to, the members of our armed forces who are serving there.

Today’s technology and security issues are changing at an ever more rapid pace. The technology that has been developed was unforeseen a matter of years ago, but so too were the threats and dangers that we now face as a nation. Any threat that we face must be put in context, and the context and objectives for deploying force must involve a number of criteria: the maximum strategic advantage over our enemy, protecting UK service personnel and—quite rightly—minimising civilian casualties and acting at all times within humanitarian and international law. Also, we should make sure that deployment is in line with our national interest and our right, as a nation, to self-defence.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a strong case for the use of UAVs, but does he accept that the continuing criticism of and controversy about the misuse, sometimes, of drones, particularly in parts of Pakistan, where there are high levels of civilian casualties, undermine the rightful case for UAVs when they are in our strategic interest?

[Mr Jones]

I shall refer to Pakistan later, but having been there, and having been a Defence Minister, I accept that there is a big gulf between those who are democratically elected in Pakistan, and the military. I do not accept that some of the actions being taken in northern Pakistan are being done without the knowledge of the Pakistan military. I accept that that creates tensions in Pakistan, but not the idea that some of those things are being done without any knowledge on the part of people in authority there. Having spoken to politicians on my last visit to Pakistan I know that they find that situation difficult; however, that is a debate within the context of the democratic accountability of the armed forces in Pakistan. I assure my hon. Friend that some intelligence and other targeting involve co-operation with the Pakistan military.

In the context that I have outlined, our judgment is that the UK’s current position on deployment of UAVs seems to meet the criteria I have specified. However, we should keep that issue under constant review. It has already been said that it is important to distinguish the deployment of the UK’s UAVs from the deployment of those of our allies. I understand that at present some 76 nations operate UAVs and, as has already been described, the UK deploys four types in Afghanistan. However, only one of those, the Reaper, has an armed capacity. The main focus for our UAV technology in Afghanistan is surveillance and support of our operations, and I have seen at first hand the tremendous job it does in protecting convoys and intelligence gathering, which is vital for the security of our and our allies’ armed forces personnel.

As a matter of technology, UAVs can be more cost-effective in carrying out surveillance and other forms of projecting power. If we did not use their surveillance capacity in relation to convoy protection we would have many more casualties in Afghanistan. I do not accept the argument that UAVs are more indiscriminate, when used in a kinetic role, than conventional aircraft. Their ability to loiter for a long period gives more information to those who are deciding the targeting than is available to a manned aircraft. It would be wrong to give the impression that UAVs are a magic solution to all our defence needs; but they are very important in the defence of the country. The Opposition’s policy is clear. We support unmanned technology as an important element of military capability that complements our manned aerial capability, but with a desire to ensure that it is used in the right context.

The UK does not work on operations in isolation; it works with allies—and not only on operations, but, as has been mentioned, in co-operation on development. It would be interesting to hear what stage of development has been reached after the new Anglo-French agreement on co-operating on the next generation of UAVs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston and other hon. Members mentioned, the use of UAVs by our most important strategic partner, the United States, has caused public controversy. It is important to distinguish the UK’s use of UAVs from that of the United States. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife made the important point that most of our UAV deployment in Afghanistan is for surveillance and is not armed, and that deployment of UAVs is only within the borders of Afghanistan. However, we must all recognise the threat that we, the United States and our other allies face from concerted Islamic terrorism and groups who seek to undermine our way of life and destabilise Afghanistan and other parts of the world.

A lot has been written and said about civilian casualties, and all civilian casualties are a matter of great sadness and deep regret. It is difficult to get the true picture and figures. I do not want to talk in statistics, because one life lost means a family is mourning a loved one. Our major aim should be to do anything that can be done to minimise civilian casualties, whether from a strike by a UAV or by any other conventional weaponry. I know from my time in the Ministry of Defence that the military take that very seriously. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) mentioned artillery rounds and other things that are far more indiscriminate than some of the technology.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is setting out an eloquent and articulate argument. He mentioned minimising casualties, and the families left to mourn. Does he agree that without the use of UAVs in Afghanistan the number of families of British service personnel mourning a loved one would undoubtedly increase?

[Mr Jones]

With respect to the use of UAVs for intelligence gathering and protection of convoys I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. That brings me to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston and the hon. Member for North Wiltshire raised. To people who are against war, we must be honest and say that war is not a pleasant thing; people die in wars. There are individuals and groups active in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan who are bent on undermining not only the way of life of the United States but the one that we take for granted. It is important that any use of force should be a proportionate response.

There has been a lot of talk about the United States and whether the UAV strikes in northern Pakistan are legal. They were authorised post the 11 September authorisation of the use of military forces and have been reinforced by the Obama Administration. When I was at the Ministry of Defence there was a big debate about whether they would continue when President Obama took over, and clearly they have. Article 51 of the United Nations charter, on a nation’s right to self-defence, is also relevant. We must remember that the individuals in question are not sitting around discussing philosophy; they are planning terrorist strikes and atrocities across the world. In the debate about whether we use force to counter those individuals, I am comfortable about recognising the existence of a threat: that has led to disruption of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, and it would not have happened without that type of action.

We support the move by the United States to codify the use of UAVs, which relates to the points made about new technology. It is partly because of the controversy that we need to do something. It is important that the UK examine whether we should have a code covering the contexts and limitations of usage, the process for internal Government oversight of deployments, command and control structures, and acceptable levels of automation. I accept that there is now someone at the end of a UAV, but the next generation of UAVs may be completely autonomous, and we must ensure that such a change is within a legal envelope.

One important point is that I am in no way criticising the Government by saying that no laws are in place. I am well aware of the legal constraints on the selection of targets, and that the same rules of engagement are used as for manned flights. We should however explain UAVs to the public. With the new technology, trying to codify their use and explaining to individuals exactly how targets are selected, for example, and how UAVs are used for both surveillance and military purposes would be a great step forward.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

UAVs could be used for piracy patrols on the east coast of Africa and for fishing enforcement. Those two examples would clearly show that drones can have acceptable roles. I agree about their acceptability, and I believe that other people can be persuaded to have the same opinion.

[Mr Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is correct. Certainly, if we can have unmanned vehicles in the UK—once agreement is reached with the Civil Aviation Authority—there may be many uses, as he says, including for security.

It would be helpful if we codified the operations. Am I arguing that no laws currently govern the situation? No, I am not. The rules are based on the Ministry of Defence joint doctrine note 2/11 on “The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems”, but the MOD sometimes has a tendency not to answer questions and to think that it has to shroud such things in secrecy. Whether or not what is being said is true—in many cases, I do not think it is—the perception is that the technology is used indiscriminately and without control. Some type of code would go a long way towards reassuring people that there is a chain of command, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston said, for the individual who takes the decision.

There is also a perception that people sitting in Nevada or Florida are killing indiscriminately with no thought of the consequences of what they are doing. I do not accept that. Anyone who has met members of the armed forces of this country or other countries knows that the decision to fire—whether that is Winston Churchill with his revolver, a UAV operator or a pilot dropping munition—is not taken lightly. It is important that people know the full legal background. Unless someone has been involved in operations, they think it is strange that there is a legal context before targetings happen. If we explained that in a codified system, it would help the debate on the use of a new and developing technology.

The Opposition support the use of UAVs. The technology is important in relation not only to military capability, but to the development of our industry and technology in that area. We are developing technologies that will have applications other than military use. As has already been demonstrated in Afghanistan, the technology helps to protect and support our armed forces.

In conclusion, I accept that some of the information about what has happened in northern Pakistan is alarming. The important thing is to understand the context and how the deaths of some individuals have disrupted terrorist networks that were bringing danger not only to parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan but to the streets of London and the capitals of our allies. In terms of the general debate started by my hon. Friend, the use of weapons will never be something that people take lightly, and nor should they. If we can debate the use of UAVs as no different from the use of any other military weapons and we put that into some kind of code, which we could be open about, not secretive, it would do a lot to ensure not only that we in this country are moral leaders in the use of weapons, but that the public have full confidence, as they should, in the existing military chain of command.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Leigh, in a different capacity from when you chaired the Public Accounts Committee, on which I was privileged to sit.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) on securing the debate. As all speakers have said, it demonstrates the increasing interest among not only Members of the House but the public at large about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, as currently deployed in Afghanistan and as might be deployed in the future. As she said, only last month I responded to a similar debate, which had been secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti). He made a brief intervention during the hon. Lady’s speech, and I am sorry that he is not with us to hear mine, because I will try to cover many of the issues raised in this debate and since the previous one in early November.

I start by setting out the context of how, where and why the UK armed forces employ remotely piloted aircraft systems, or UAVs as they are regularly referred to. In this debate, I shall use the term RPAS—remotely piloted aircraft systems—as the more accurate description of their capability, not only because that is what they are, but because that is how they are commonly referred to by the armed forces, particularly the RAF. Although the vehicles are unmanned, the system is guided by a whole team of highly trained and skilled people. Pilots, sensor operators and analysts all make decisions in real time, just like the crew of a manned aircraft. Defence remains a human endeavour. As the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) said, humans have taken stand-off weapons development through the generations and the centuries, but there has always been human involvement.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the Minister agree that there are also lawyers in the chain of that decision-making process, who ensure that the targets selected fall within legal parameters?

[Mr Dunne]

I will explain how the UK armed forces use rules of engagement that are clearly defined and informed by legal opinion, as the hon. Gentleman indicates.

RPAS technology is principally required and used by our armed forces for surveillance and reconnaissance tasks, as several Members mentioned, providing vital intelligence in support of our forces on the ground. While the utility of sensors is broadly similar to those aboard conventionally manned aircraft, RPAS have the ability to loiter for longer, building an intelligence picture that significantly enhances the situational awareness of commanders, forces on the ground and air crew.

RPAS surveillance and reconnaissance capability and the requirement for ever better intelligence, precision and situational awareness are such that they are now vital to mission success, as has been clearly demonstrated in theatre in Afghanistan. The UK currently only deploys RPAS for support of operations in Afghanistan. With the progress of technology and increasing appreciation of their military utility, the number deployed in Afghanistan has continued to increase, with further task lines of Reaper due to become operational next year.

To deliver operational RPAS capability for our forces in Afghanistan, a number of UK RPAS are being used for development trials and training in the UK and in a number of our partner nations. I confirm again that currently the operational deployment for RPAS is for the purposes of operations in Afghanistan, and that UK RPAS are saving the lives of both British and coalition service personnel and Afghan civilians on a daily basis. In that respect, RPAS are no different from other aircraft. The same rules that govern the use of conventional military aircraft apply to RPAS. As I said, UK RPAS are anything but unmanned.

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[Mr Dunne]

As I have explained a couple of times, we are at present using RPAS on operations in Afghanistan, and at present we have no other operational use in mind for UK assets beyond Afghanistan. I think that is as far as I can go on that matter at the moment.

I will pick up on some of the comments made by the hon. Member for North Durham. I am grateful for his support for the continued use of unmanned aircraft systems. I am glad that he referred to the joint doctrine document, because it begins to set out some of the issues that are of concern. However, I do not accept the need to undertake a codification of separate rules for RPAS. As I have already mentioned, and as the hon. Gentleman acknowledges, all aircraft operators must follow national and international laws, together with the rules of engagement. Those rules are the same whether an air, sea or land-based platform is being used. Similarly, we have well-established command, control and supervisory frameworks for all our operational assets, so we do not believe at this point that additional measures are needed for RPAS. I will just pick up on the thrust of why I think he was suggesting that we need to take the public with us in our use of RPAS, which is something that I agree with. There is a greater role to be played by politicians and the military in explaining to the public the utility of unmanned systems from a military perspective, from the safety perspective of our own personnel, which is obviously vital, and in minimising the risk of collateral damage when weaponised systems are used. As a Government, we need to do more, and I welcome the help of the hon. Gentleman in advocating the use of such systems to the public at large.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston said that we have to bring the public with us. The Americans are already looking at codification. Would it not be a help to the MOD in getting the arguments across? I accept that an anorak like me reads those documents, but the average person in the street does not. If we had a clearly laid out code, it would give reassurance to individuals who are rightly worried that this new technology is not under any type of control; that is not the case, so it will at least give them some reassurance.

[Mr Dunne]

The difficulty with a code is how it is differentiated from rules of engagement. For the reasons I have explained, we do not wish to publish specific rules of engagement, so having a code would head us down a direction of potentially having to publish more about our operational use than would be safe for us to do.

We already have procedures in place for the oversight of all the military capabilities that we have deployed, and the National Security Council will consider whether forces should be deployed in the future. It operates with the benefit of the NSDR and NSDA, to use military acronyms—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The Minister has been captured already.

[Mr Dunne]

I am in danger of falling into a trap that I should not have set myself.

Finally, RPAS is not shielded in secrecy, which was the expression used in the article in The Times that was referred to earlier in the debate. During the last few weeks, months and years, we have released significant details about our use of RPAS, but our use of RPAS should not be confused with general MOD policy on safeguarding information relevant to targeting and intelligence. I hope that, on reflection, the hon. Gentleman will recognise that that is an overriding requirement and puts to rest the need for any potential confusion with a system of codification, rules of engagement or secrecy over the matter.

Let me finish by restating that the UK complies fully with its obligations under international law, as set out in article 36 of additional protocol 1 to the Geneva conventions, to review all new weapons, and means and methods of warfare. That process applies to unmanned capabilities as well as to other manned weapons systems.

I welcome the opportunity presented by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston to put on the record once again the Government’s clear view of the benefits of RPAS in minimising the risk to civilians, as well as to our own service personnel and other coalition forces. RPAS provide vital intelligence to our forces on the ground and I can only see their importance increasing, as part of our overall service capability.

Ex-service Personnel (Psychological Welfare)

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

As chair of the Unite the Union group in Parliament and of the all-party group on health and safety, I have spent most of my working life in politics standing up for people who have been disadvantaged because of the career they have chosen. As Major Cameron March MBE, from the Army’s operational stress management team, recently said:

“If we put people into difficult places we’ve got to have something in place to look after them”.

That is true in all walks of life, whether we are dealing with builders exposed to asbestos, lorry drivers travelling over long hours or, as I will speak about this evening, service personnel exposed to traumatic experiences. The issue I have brought to the House today seems to me to be an extreme example of occupational health and safety. As employers, we have a responsibility to those brave individuals to ensure they can live a fulfilling life following their service.

I was delighted to read in one of the tabloid papers today that the Prime Minister has announced £1 million for veterans’ charities. I would like to say, “It was this debate wot done it”, but something inside tells me that another event is taking place tonight that has been organised by one of the tabloid papers. The £1 million is welcome and I am sure the veterans will appreciate it.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD as it is now known, is not a new phenomenon. It was first identified during the first world war, and was called “shell shock”. We have moved on since then and correctly recognise that it is a serious condition that in no way undermines the brave work undertaken by our armed forces. Despite that, there is still a significant stigma attached to mental health issues among veterans. Many still consider themselves “weak” if they suffer in the adjustment to civilian life.

A culture change among veterans is needed, but for policymakers that is difficult to achieve. However, if the Government direct more funding to the condition, which is what I shall argue for today, we can give hope to those suffering and help them to recognise that they are not weak and that the condition is a natural reaction to the horrors they have seen.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend pay tribute to the work of Dr Ian Palmer and the medical assessment programme at St Mary’s? Until recently it was open to all veterans who could go for individual psychological assessments. That has now been downgraded and moved to Chilwell in Nottinghamshire. Does my hon. Friend share my concern about that and agree that open access, even later in life, is important for veterans?

[Jim Sheridan]

I am not aware of the precise details, but I am extremely disappointed to hear that. I am sure that the Minister will address that when he gets the opportunity.

My right hon. colleague, the Minister for the Armed Forces, has said that he

“takes the issue of mental health very seriously, and we recognise that operational deployments will inevitably expose personnel to stressful experiences.”—[Official Report, 12 June 2012; Vol. 546, c. 447W.]

Similarly, when he was a Health Minister, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), claimed that the coalition Government

“considers the health and wellbeing of…armed forces personnel, veterans and their families to be a top priority.”—[Official Report, 18 June 2012; Vol. 546, c. 801W.]

I agree with these sentiments, as I am sure we all do. Those veterans have put their lives on the line so that we can be safe. They have done a great service for their country and they deserve the top service from their country in return. So why then do the actions of Ministers not speak louder than their words? Their statements are commendable, but their funding commitments are not. I am calling today for more public funding to be directed to the issue and for the psychological well-being of our veterans to be considered a top priority.

Defence Personnel

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Stuart]

That may well be the case, but we have to start with where we think we should be and then we can work out where we ought to be. It is not just the MOD that lacks that strategic sense. At one stage, the Department for International Development had a clear statutory duty of poverty reduction, but even that is being reviewed and rethought at the moment—I am not entirely sure where that takes us. Our Foreign Office is also reducing its influence. If we consider how this country projects itself to the rest of the world, we will see that there is a lack of clarity in those lead Departments that ought to provide a collective view.

I asked myself whether this was happening all over the world and looked at comparative figures for GDP spending on NATO. Even if we look back as far as the 1950s, there is a consistent pattern within the European Union. Our country and France contribute well over 2% of GDP commitment, so we clearly have a view on where we should be in terms of spending.

It is sometimes difficult to make comparisons between armed forces numbers, because we ended conscription. The Italian and German figures in particular—they sometimes include police forces—are somewhat misleading, but nevertheless the pattern shows that we are still big significant players. We have no sense, however, of why we want to be the big players. What are we going to do?

I want to leave the Minister with a final example of that muddled, confused thinking. In my experience, it is always when we are not entirely sure what we want to say that we end up constructing sentences that are utterly meaningless. The Defence Committee took evidence yesterday on the Army 2020 review and I was struck by something called, “Figure 1: Force Development Deductions”. I invite the Minister to look at the relevant paragraph. I will not bore the House by reading it. It has about 10 sentences and I am glad that the word “broadband” is in there, because that is about the only word I understood. I drew the attention of our witness, General Sir Peter Wall, to that paragraph and asked him about it, and he confessed his confusion about the precise meaning of that integral part of the report. He promised the Committee that he would consult the Babel fish and provide us with an English translation. I think that demonstrates that the MOD needs to be much clearer, particularly post-Afghanistan, of what we think our forces are for. It is no good just to say, “This is how much money we’ve got,” even though the money is important.

This might again be a sign of my emotional attachment as a foreigner, but I am always struck by the island blindness of this country. This is an island, so how can we compromise some of our surveillance abilities? What will happen to maritime security? It is staggering. That is my general point for the Minister.

My second point is much more grounded at home. Last week, I went to meet Malala Yousafzai’s father—the family are currently in my constituency at the Queen Elizabeth hospital and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, which do extraordinary work. It was particularly pleasing for me to see that good work, because I was the evil Minister who closed down the military hospitals in places such as Gosport and I remember being denounced in endless Adjournment debates for doing so.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I closed the last one.

[Ms Stuart]

But we closed them not because we wanted to, but because the royal colleges were telling us that the MOD could no longer provide the best medical services. Ten years ago, the NHS looked at the Ministry of Defence and said, “You guys really need to step up to the plate and improve your act.” Now, some of the work within defence medicine is miles ahead of what the NHS is doing in terms of rehabilitation and care. We have unexpected survival rates among soldiers, which one can see in the latest evidence from Afghanistan, that are well beyond what the NHS could do. That is a good development.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) and the Backbench Business Committee for securing the time for this important debate.

The defence of the realm and the security of our people is the first and most important duty of any Government. Governments must demonstrate that they value the service and sacrifices of the men and women who serve in our armed forces. Our defence personnel, both on operations and at home, do an awesome job. I know that the House is hugely grateful for everything that they do. I would like to put my personal thanks and appreciation on the record.

We must ensure that our defence personnel have the kit that they need, and that we are clear and candid with them about the changes and challenges that they face. If we do that well, we will create an armed forces and a Ministry of Defence that are militarily effective and sustainable.

The Government have done much of which they can be justly proud in regard to our defence personnel. The historic enshrining in law of the military covenant will change for ever how Governments and our society fulfil their obligations to our forces personnel, veterans and their families. The doubling of the operational allowance was also most welcome.

However, aspects of the 2012 armed forces continuous attitude survey should give us all pause for thought and concern. Satisfaction with pay and pensions is down and our troops feel undervalued. The Government must appreciate that, no matter how resilient our armed forces are, uncertainty over their future is breeding low morale. I would like the Minister to address in his winding-up speech what steps the Department will take to ensure that all defence personnel are informed in a transparent and direct manner of exactly what changes will be affecting them as soon as is practical. Our armed forces are the best of Britain—there is no doubt about that—and they understand that changes need to take place. So let us not insult their intelligence. Let us be as clear and as frank as we can be. They will respect that, whatever the decisions may be.

There are changes that need to be made. When the Government took office, it became abundantly clear that there was no money left. Under the last Government, the MOD was placed in special measures by the Treasury because of its inability to manage its budget. By making the difficult decisions and taking action, this Government have brought the finances back in order and under control.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am intrigued by that point. The claim of both the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) and the current Defence Secretary is that they were left a £38 billion black hole. They seem to have plugged that within two years, which is remarkable. Clearly, the two of them should be Chancellor. I notice that there is no mention of that in the introduction to today’s annual accounts. We are still waiting for the figures. How can the hon. Gentleman claim that the budget has been balanced when no such evidence has been produced by the Department?

[Jack Lopresti]

There is no question but that the MOD’s finances were a mess when we took office. The words that I used were that the Government have “brought the finances back in order and under control.”

I praise the Government’s ambition to have a more flexible armed forces on a sustainable footing, but I disagree that a smaller armed forces is needed. Ministers have said repeatedly that no one wants to see reductions in our armed forces, so why are we protecting spending on international development and aid and giving £9.3 billion a year to the EU? I was elected, as were my hon. Friends, on a mandate that called for an increase in the size of the Army.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti), who, with his experience, has much to bring to debates such as this, as well as the Chair of the Defence Committee. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and I are members of the German caucus of the House of Commons, and I am pleased to follow her as the next Opposition speaker.

I will concentrate on the forthcoming base review, and I look forward to the Minister’s response to get clarity on why the statement is not being made on Tuesday and on when we can expect it. The base review is directly related to defence personnel because it will concentrate on arrangements for the return of UK forces from Germany and confirm the configuration of basing arrangements—which units go where, which will change their role or close, and which will not return. That is what we expect to hear.

We should put ourselves in the position of servicemen and women and their families, whether they are at a base in the UK, Germany or somewhere else. It is coming up to Christmas and they are expecting some clarity, but unfortunately they will not get it, which is a shame. It would be helpful for the Minister to offer clarity on the time scale.

I want to focus on the impact of the basing review on service personnel and communities not only in the UK, but in Germany. I had the good fortune to be in Lower Saxony two weeks ago—I visited the area around the Bergen-Hohne training area—to meet the local authorities. An announcement on basing will have an impact on those authorities and the service and civilian communities around the training area. Speaking to the mayor of Bad Fallingbostel, Rainer Schmuck, reminded me of the experience we had in Moray recently—as part of the review of RAF bases, the local community had to plan for all kind of eventualities, which is incredibly destabilising. The basing announcement will have a tremendous impact on local authority budgets available in communities such as Bad Fallingbostel.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

When the hon. Gentleman was in Germany, did he get any indication of whether the British Government have given two years’ notice of withdrawal, which they must give under the treaty? It is my understanding from a recent conversation that that has not yet been given, which is adding uncertainty about what will happen in Germany.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

Yes, absolutely. I believe that the Government are working on schemes that will make it possible for ex-service personnel to get their foot on the housing ladder. I look forward to what I hope will be positive recommendations by the Minister on this subject.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that I started that scheme in the last four months of my time as veterans Minister, and the take-up showed that it was very popular.

[Dr Lewis]

I am delighted that there appears to be consensus across the House. Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman had been in post a little earlier than he was, he would have started the scheme a little earlier in Labour’s long period in office.

On a more positive note, Dr Milroy and his organisation recently had a considerable success when the Government acknowledged and accepted their campaign saying that minor military disciplinary offences should no longer be allowed to count against Commonwealth soldiers who, after their period of service to this country, often in dangerous theatres, were applying for British residency and British citizenship. It was a massive injustice that issues that would normally be regarded in civilian life as minor infractions and not criminal in any way were being used by, I believe, the UK Border Agency, against the applications of individual Commonwealth servicemen or ex-servicemen to become British citizens. I am glad that Hugh Milroy and Veterans Aid mounted a successful, high-profile campaign and that the Government listened to them.

Finally, I hope that the Government will be in similar listening mode with regard to a very high-profile case—I think I was the first MP to raise it on the Floor of the House—namely that of Special Air Service Sergeant Danny Nightingale. I am aware that the case is going to appeal on the question of conviction, so I will not stray into the issue of whether that appeal should succeed. I note with great pleasure that the appeal against sentence was successful and I was privileged to be present in the court. I thought it was absolutely grotesque to see a man of Sergeant Nightingale’s character and record in the barred dock of the court, but it was a great result that his sentence was reduced and suspended. He should never have been in custody in the first place.

The only point I wish to make is that Ministers should bear in mind that if the appeal is successful—I say if—the question will arise of whether there should be a retrial. I hope that, if the appeal against conviction is successful, Ministers will have the good sense to say that enough is enough and to make that opinion clear.

My mind goes back to one of the first service personnel campaigns that I was involved in when I came to this House in the late 1990s, namely the case of the two RAF Chinook pilots who were killed when their helicopter crashed into the Mull of Kintyre. That case dragged on and on, and for no good purpose. Lord Chalfont and others in the House of Lords, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in this House, and, I would like to think, many of us—in my case on the Back Benches and later on the then Opposition Front Bench, where I held a role similar to that held today by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones)—pressed the case continuously. Our argument was that, given that the rules were changed after the crash so that no future pilots who were killed in a crash could ever be blamed in the way that they had been blamed, it was nonsensical and unfair that those whose case had led to the change in the rules should not benefit from it.

The same situation could well arise with Sergeant Nightingale. The Secretary of State for Defence has made it clear that he is considering—I hope that he will continue to consider it and, indeed, go ahead with it—an amnesty for other service personnel who have brought back and are holding on to, as trophies, weapons that should not still be in their possession. It would be absurd for the person whose trial had led to the amnesty—we should also remember that an amnesty has already been held locally, which led to other members of the SAS handing in a lot of unauthorised weapons—not to be given the benefit of the fact that an amnesty was now available for everyone else.

I will close as I began by saying that anything that any of us has to say pales into minor significance compared with what we heard from my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham. It was a privilege to be here during his speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) and the Backbench Business Committee on selecting this afternoon’s debate. Let me put on record everyone’s thanks and tributes to the members of our armed forces and their families, who are an integral part of the defence of our country. I also agree with the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) about the army of civil servants and civil contractors, without whose support we could not deploy forces.

There have been 11 very good contributions to today’s debate. The right hon. Member for North East Hampshire talked about Afghanistan. I agree that the deadline has focused minds in Afghanistan; my concern is about what role UK armed forces will play post-2014. There is a naive assumption that a training role will be without its dangers, but the people performing training roles with the embedded teams in Iraq were in harm’s way. We need clarification from the Government on that before 2014, because people will be in harm’s way. We also need to know what our armed forces’ footprint will be in Afghanistan post-2014.

The right hon. Gentleman also talked about the Service Complaints Commissioner, as did the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt). This was a tremendous success for the Defence Committee, following its report on the duty of care in the last Parliament, although I agree with the hon. Lady that the next step needs to be some type of ombudsman—a proposal that was in the original report to give the post teeth. I, too, pay tribute to the Service Complaints Commissioner, who has done a first-rate job in not only highlighting and dealing with complaints, but getting the trust of senior members of the armed forces.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) raised the issue of medical support for our armed forces. She, like me, was heavily criticised at the time for the closure of Army, Navy and RAF-dedicated hospitals, but in hindsight it was the right thing to do. She rightly paid tribute to the Queen Elizabeth hospital and the investment that has gone into it, as well as the dedicated NHS staff working closely alongside the military personnel, breaking new ground not only with new surgical techniques but by keeping people alive who even a matter of years ago would not have survived, as she rightly said. However, I have concerns about how the NHS integrates with the Army recovery capability—which she also raised—which is something I am glad the Government are committed to. We need to ensure a seamless transition into civilian life for those people, and that they get the appropriate NHS care once they have left the armed forces.

My hon. Friend made some interesting points about finance in relation to the strategic defence and security review. No one will be surprised when I reiterate that the SDSR was not a defence review but a budget-led, Treasury-led review. As a nation, we need to ask what our role is in the world. That was not done as part of the SDSR, as it was led by the Treasury. That led to some of the mistakes that are now being unpicked as the new Secretary of State tries to get to grips with the situation.

The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) talked about the defence budget. The Government keep pushing the myth that they started with a £38 billion black hole, even though no one has yet been able to explain the calculations behind that figure. The original National Audit Office report said that there would be a £6 billion black hole if the budget continued on its present basis. The only way of arriving at a figure of £36 billion would be to add flat cash over 10 years and to include everything in the equipment programme. That still leaves an unexplained extra £2 billion. Members will be pleased to know that I am now on Twitter, and I had an interesting exchange last night with the former Minister for defence procurement, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), who told me that the figure was even higher than £38 billion. If that is the case, why do we not know what it actually is?

That brings me to the Ministry of Defence’s annual report and accounts, which make great reading. It is interesting that claims by the previous and present Secretaries of State to have balanced the budget are nowhere to be seen in the introduction. It will also come as no surprise that the accounts for this year have been qualified.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

May I gently draw the attention of the shadow Minister to the fact that the accounts were qualified in every year under the last Labour Government as well?

[Mr Jones]

I acknowledge that, but I did not make wild claims about somehow having magicked away a £38 billion black hole in two years, which the Secretary of State is now doing.

The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke mentioned Defence Equipment and Support, and I agree with him that there is uncertainty in that regard that needs early resolution. He might be interested to know that the accounts show that the average length of time that the MOD equipment programme was delayed in 2010-11 was 0.46 months, and that the figure has now increased to 5.5 months. No great progress has been made in the efficiency of the delivery of that programme.

Another startling fact to emerge from the annual report and accounts is that the Department has not received approval for the remuneration package for the Chief of Defence Matériel, who is earning considerably more than the Prime Minister. It has been suggested that the Department has somehow acted outside its authority in this regard. We need clarification of some of the issues raised in the annual report and accounts.

We keep being promised an explanation of the Secretary of State’s assertion that the defence budget is now in balance. On 14 May and 11 June, he told the House that he would shortly publish the figures, and he told the Defence Select Committee on 12 July that the NAO report would be published in September and that it would explain exactly how he had balanced the budget. The hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) raised an interesting point about this matter.

Yesterday, during the Chancellor’s statement, it was mentioned almost as an aside that defence had somehow got off lightly, given the further 1% cuts that other Departments were being asked to make—but that is not the case. It will have to swallow cuts of its own, and, according to The Daily Telegraph today, that will involve another £1.3 billion coming out of defence. It is important that we get clarification of this so-called balancing of the budget, when it is clearly not in balance. We also need an explanation of where the original figure of £38 billion came from.

The reason that is important is that members of our armed forces and their families know that we are in tough times and that they have to take some share of the pain. What they do not want to see, however, are spurious figures and spurious claims made to justify some of what is being done. There are only two ways of getting money quickly out of the defence budget: either by cutting the number of personnel or by cutting in-year programmes, leaving capability gaps, which is what the strategic defence and security review has done.

The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) made some points about Germany and rebasing. We have been promised a statement next week, so it will be interesting to see whether that comes forward. I thought it completely bonkers when the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) made the announcement. I looked at the issue when I was a Minister, so I know that four years ago the price tag was £3.5 billion—but where that is coming from, I do not know. It is important to have clarification not only for the reasons that the right hon. Gentleman gave regarding communities and individuals here, but because we must know what is actually happening for our servicemen and women along with civil servants, educationalists and others based in Germany. If the cost was £3.5 billion then, it is surely a lot higher today. It is not just about bringing people back, as it is also about evaluating the costs of withdrawal—environmental and other costs that will be added to the clean-up of those areas. Under the treaty with the Germans, it is quite clear that two years’ written notice has to be given, but I am not aware that that has happened. I do not mind if the Government have changed their policy on this issue, but they should say so, as we do not want the uncertainty.

The hon. Member for Moray spoke about the so-called future Scottish armed forces, claiming that they will comprise 15,000. I am not sure what type of role they will take: if they are to be in NATO, what would they deploy? Will the army act as a border force to stop riotous Northumbrians crossing the border? Will there be a navy of fishing boats? Will the air force be of gliders? In this debate, it is important for the Scottish National party not only to deal with the present lay-down of armed forces, as the hon. Gentleman has, but to be honest with people and say what the future defence structure would look like in an independent Scotland.

I join the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) in paying tribute to Wootton Bassett and to Sir Neil Thorne. I also commend the hon. Gentleman’s role on the marching parades, which have been supported across the parties.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his quite proper recognition of the contribution of people from Northern Ireland to the armed forces. I visited Northern Ireland when I was a Minister, and I was very impressed by the dedication I found there to all three of our armed forces.

I know that on many occasions the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) adopts a light-hearted approach in his contributions to the House. Today, however, he made a very serious contribution, which I think shows the House of Commons at its best. He paid tribute to the victims of the Droppin’ Well bombing. It must have been very difficult for him to relive some of those experiences today, so I pay tribute to him for doing so. He is right that 30 years seems a long time ago, but not for him and the people who were there. Speaking as he did in this debate greatly honours those people and pays a fitting tribute to their memories. I hope that his contribution gives some comfort to those who were injured in the ways he described and to the families, relatives and friends of those who lost their lives.

The hon. Member for Beckenham mentioned another matter, and his position was the same as mine when I was veterans Minister. It is fine to get things right now for veterans and those injured in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. My concern, in common with the hon. Gentleman’s, is what happens to these people in 20, 30 or 40 years’ time. We, as a society and a nation, owe a great debt of gratitude to those individuals. Irrespective of our political parties, we need to ensure that that remains the case. I hope that the work with service charities in relation to the Army recovery capability scheme, which is in the pipeline, involves something of that joined-up approach, but we shall have to monitor this on a yearly basis. We shall need to look after the people to whom the hon. Gentleman referred—who are already injured as a result of service in Afghanistan and Iraq—when they are older. There can be no if or but; we must do that.

When it comes to housing—the favourite subject of the hon. Member for Colchester—we must ensure that we continue to listen to the views of the British Armed Forces Federation.

Let me end by saying that it is always good to hear such well-informed contributions, and by again paying tribute to our brave servicemen and women.