Future Army 2020
Debate between Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom and Lord Walney
Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con) (Select Committee Statement)
There is little time available to us, so I shall cut my remarks to the bone in order to allow other Members to ask questions about the Defence Committee’s report, “Future Army 2020”—a report which speaks for itself.
We welcome many aspects of the changes that are being introduced by the Ministry of Defence. We welcome the increased spending on the reserves, the fact that reservists will have more training days, and the fact that they will work more closely with the regulars. We welcome the Government’s commitment to report annually on the state of the reserve forces, although our report calls on the Government to go further. All those measures will help to tie the armed forces into the public that they defend, and to reduce what we describe as the disconnect between the armed forces and the public.
However, we also have real concerns. We are concerned about the fact that the radical reduction of the Regular Army to 82,500 was simply announced to the Chief of the General Staff, without consultation on whether that was the right figure to address the threats we face, without testing or experimentation, and without being referred to the National Security Council, although it amounted to a reduction of 12,000 personnel and although the figure of 94,500 appeared in the strategic defence and security review as recently as 2010. It was a figure set purely on the basis of the finances that were available, rather than through any reiterative process of negotiation.
We are concerned about recruitment to both the regulars and the reservists. A career in the armed forces is a fantastically valuable and enjoyable one—as usual, I declare my interest: my eldest daughter is a lieutenant in the reserves—and people should not hold back from applying for that wonderful career. However, recruitment has not gone as well as it should have, partly because of failings in the Army’s own processes, partly because of IT failures, and partly because of the transfer of the role to Capita.
We are also concerned about the fact that the regulars are being made redundant before the reservists have been recruited. We understand the efforts that everyone is making to put the recruiting difficulties right, and I hear that things are turning around, but turn around they must. As we say in the report, we face the possibility that the Army will be short of personnel in key supporting capabilities.
Army 2020 presents a radical vision of the future role and structure of the Army. The Government have said it has to work, as there is no plan B. That is the challenge that confronts the Ministry of Defence and the Army. We congratulate the new Chief of the General Staff on his appointment; he has a challenging time ahead. We thank the outgoing Chief of the General Staff for his fantastic work and service over many years. And we commend the report to the House.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
The Committee has produced a considered report, in whose formation I was privileged to be involved at a very late stage. Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that there is a genuine risk that service numbers may fall so low as to affect our ability to sustain a force which the country needs to retain an expeditionary capability to intervene when necessary, unless there is a longer-term strategic rethink of the way in which we fund defence activities?
Mr Arbuthnot
I do consider that there is that risk, and I consider that it is a twofold risk. There is the risk that already exists because of the recruiting issues about which we have expressed concern, but there is an even greater risk of further raids on the defence budget in the future. I personally believe that the defence budget should increase, but in any event we must guard against both those risks.
Defence and Cyber-security
Debate between Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom and Lord Walney(10 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Arbuthnot
I do, and I hope that in answering the debate my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces will take that point straight on the chin, because in many respects the armed forces are the resource of last resort, and cyber-security may be an area where the armed forces do not accept that responsibility.
There is a necessary focus within the defence world on securing the systems and networks needed by the MOD and the armed forces from cyber-threats. It is not only contemporary civil society that is utterly dependent on network technology; our armed forces are increasingly reliant on such technology for the tools of warfare, and the next step must be to ensure that the supply chain for those systems and their components is secure. That will require a trusting, transparent relationship between Government and their suppliers, with full disclosure of attacks and possible vulnerabilities, which runs all the way down the supply chain. The UK has world-class expertise and facilities on which to draw, but will the Government be able, in competition with the private sector, to keep enough of that expertise and experience in the service of the state? Are there enough such people to serve both and how should we prioritise?
The announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence in September 2013 about the establishment of a joint cyber reserve unit is a significant development, but that will rely on FTSE companies and other, smaller companies releasing key personnel to participate. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces tell us what progress has been made? According to the Government, the number of ICT and cyber-security professionals in the UK has not increased in line with the growth of the internet. Are there enough experts in industry willing to join a cyber reserve? Will technology experts—the geeks of our world—fit well within highly regimented military structures, or will a more flexible structure be required to facilitate their work?
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Gentleman is rightly raising just some of the myriad questions about the future in cyberspace. Does he agree that these questions are so wide-ranging and fluid, given the incredible acceleration in technology, as to pose the question whether in future we should have vari-speed defence and security reviews? On larger items we should look beyond the 10-year horizon, but in cyber, five years is far too long for what is happening.
Mr Arbuthnot
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), the hon. Gentleman contributes effectively to the Defence Committee and makes an interesting point—one I had not heard before. That is the value of these debates. We will all have to think about that issue.
We must seek to defend ourselves, but we must also, as has been suggested, expect to develop a capability to respond to threats in cyberspace. When doing that, we face some of the same considerations as when developing conventional military capabilities. Where does the balance lie between international collaboration and sovereign capability, for example? What sort of international arrangements will best suit our aims?
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State also talked about how the UK was developing a full spectrum military cyber-capability, including strike capability. This is an interesting and novel declaration. Everybody knows it has happened but nobody has been prepared before now to announce it. Will this declaration act as a deterrent or will it make the UK a more likely target for hacktivists and foreign states? What about the legal implications of establishing a strike capability for the personnel involved? The necessary rules of engagement for cyber-attack need to be put in place, although of course we will not be told about them.
Some maintain that cyber is just another military domain and that we can expect to do everything in cyberspace that we do in the air, on land or at sea to prevent, deter coerce or intervene. But has the distinctiveness of the cyber domain been fully grasped? It is not clear, for example, that deterrence is a concept that can apply to a domain where there are real difficulties in discovering quickly who has perpetrated an attack and for what purpose, or even that an attack has taken place. Neither is it clear that everyone has grasped how important it is to avoid a silo approach to the cyberworld. It is essential to break down the dividing lines between civilian and military, among Government Departments, between Government and the private sector, and between our country and other countries, and therefore to approach the issue in an holistic way. Paul Dwyer of Mandiant came to brief the Defence Committee and told us that it takes a network to defeat a network.
Perhaps because the threat cannot be neatly categorised, it may be unrealistic to expect a neat categorisation of the responses. Everything we have been told in the UK emphasises that the armed forces have a very limited role, protecting their own systems and developing military cyber-capabilities. For other areas of activity, those in the lead are likely to be based elsewhere, particularly in the intelligence services. That is where the important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury comes in.