Defence Personnel

Debate between Lord Beamish and Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston

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.