Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I want to address that issue. The Bill involves a number of technicalities, and that is one of them.

I have always accepted that overseas aid has a role to play, but I have consistently opposed the extraordinary increase that the Department for International Development has enjoyed from Government ring-fencing since 2010—up from £8.5 billion in 2010 to £13 billion in 2014—to meet the figure of 0.7% of gross national income.

It may benefit you, Mr Speaker, and the House if I explain the difference between GDP and GNI. I am advised that GDP is the market value of all services and goods within the borders of a nation, the measure of a country’s overall economic output, and GNI is the total value produced within a country, comprising GDP plus the income obtained from overseas through businesses and so on that have foreign operations. GNI is therefore a more generous fiscal measurement, which naturally inflates the amount of overseas aid required to meet the 0.7% figure.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is important to bear in mind the Government’s policy on overseas aid. They have made it very clear that as countries move to middle-income status, so aid will be withdrawn and we will move to more of a trade relationship. In theory, the 0.7% would therefore become redundant. Does my hon. Friend agree that the country’s duty to defend itself will never become redundant?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The problem is that today’s policy is driven by a belief that a key way to respond to the challenges we face is to increase our intervention upstream so that, by providing aid to poor and dysfunctional countries, we reduce the causes of tension and thus our need for hard power. My response is twofold.

First, there is little evidence, despite committing the massive figure of £13 billion of public money, that such soft power delivers the effect sought. We have provided more than £1 billion to assist refugee camps to cope with the Syrian crisis, yet there has been palpably no reduction in the tidal wave of migrants, whether economic migrants or those genuinely fleeing persecution. I support what the Government are doing in Syria, which is noble and right. We should seek to maintain refugees near their country of origin, not to uproot them and import them into the continent of Europe. I strongly support that policy.

Secondly, there seems to be a quaint idea that the exercise of soft power offers an alternative to hard power. Make no mistake, Mr Speaker: without serious hard power, your soft power is completely non-existent. As Theodore Roosevelt said, it is better to “carry a big stick”, and then you can speak softly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who made a very good speech.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) on his Bill and on the way he introduced it. He is one of the most knowledgeable people in this House, and probably in the country, and his expertise and judgment on the issue deserve to be recognised and respected. He gave us a superb tour d’horizon of the world today. We live in an ever more troubled and dangerous world and I agree with what he said about Russia and China. We also should not forget those rogue states in the world—those potential rogue nuclear states—that could put our security at risk. I agree with him when he says that all the previous norms and assumptions have been torn up, and the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), made that very same point.

Never before in the 30 years since the end of the cold war has our nation’s security been more important. Many of us had a rosy vision of what the world might have looked like in this part of the 21st century, but how wrong we were. I welcome the Government’s response to this new troubled world security environment. I am grateful for their commitment to spend more on defence and to spend at least 2%.

I have always been a glass half full person, and there are some good programmes coming on stream in the near future—the carriers, the Dauntless class destroyers, which are incredibly formidable vessels, the joint strike fighter, which has relevance to west Norfolk and RAF Marham, and the numerous upgrades that are taking place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot pointed out, there are still some significant gaps in our defence capabilities, not least our maritime reconnaissance capability; the carriers are obviously not yet operational and there is a carrier gap with the Harriers having been mothballed and sold.

I mentioned RAF Marham, which is the proud home of the Tornado force. That aircraft has been the workhorse of the RAF over many years and, as we speak, is playing a vital part in the campaign against ISIS and deploying its state-of-the-art reconnaissance system, RAPTOR. It is also the only platform that can deploy the Brimstone precision bomb system. It is very valuable in that theatre.

I pay tribute to the airmen and Air Force women, their families, the other personnel and the civil servants stationed at RAF Marham. They serve this country with huge competence and we should be very proud of them. The base also has a great impact on west Norfolk and is a vital and integral part of our local community. Only those colleagues with an airbase or a barracks in or near their constituency will understand how the armed forces always want to be involved, and play a part, in the community, the wider family and civic life.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I hugely appreciate my hon. Friend’s support for the Bill. May I draw his attention to the fact that one of the squadrons based at RAF Marham is 31 Squadron—the “Goldstars”—with which my father served during the second world war?

[Mr Bellingham]

That is an incredibly important connection, too, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning it. I am also grateful that he mentioned the reprieve given to the third squadron at RAF Marham, because that is crucial to the squadrons rotation through RAF Akrotiri. Had we gone down to two squadrons, the rotation would have been at least six months and perhaps nine months, which, with unaccompanied tours, would have put immense pressure on the families. Keeping the third squadron enables a three-month rotation.

I am very pleased that the joint strike fighter, the Lightning II, will be coming to RAF Marham in 2018. We are looking forward to this superb aircraft coming to west Norfolk.

I mentioned RAF Akrotiri—I shall not digress too much—and yesterday’s news of refugees arriving on its shores is extremely worrying. I understand that 17 refugees arrived there 15 years ago and their status is still uncertain. If this is opened up as a new route into Europe, it will be incredibly dangerous and I very much hope the Government will take firm action. We have the two sovereign base areas and it is essential that extra personnel and capability are put in place properly to guard the coastline and stop these very unfortunate people landing there. Does that not reinforce the Prime Minister’s decision to take refugees direct from the camps in the region, rather than encouraging people to make such a perilous journey across the Mediterranean?

[Bob Stewart]

I was in Cyprus at Dhekelia and at Akrotiri a few months ago. The 17 refugees to whom my hon. Friend refers are in Dhekelia, the eastern sovereign base area, and they have been there as long as he says.

[Mr Bellingham]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for that clarification. The idea that there is any quick solution to sorting out the status of such people when they arrive there, granting them asylum or perhaps relocating them is wishful thinking. It takes a very long time indeed under our current processes.

Let us look back roughly one year to Michael Moore’s Bill that set a target of 0.7% for international development. I said at the time that I was appalled by the Bill because we were already spending the 0.7% and I could see no reason for encapsulating it in our law. I could see no logic in doing that, based to some extent on my own experiences of overseas aid. I had the chance to see the good, the very good, the bad, the ugly and the downright bad in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. There is no question but that in some parts of the developing world our aid programmes are making a profound difference on the ground. They are helping with sustainability and development, they are helping small businesses expand and they are making a big impact on the growth of those countries. British humanitarian aid is saving lives in different parts of the world.

Staff from DFID, the related agencies and the NGOs with which they are working in partnership are doing a superb job in many countries. I had the chance to see that all over Africa—in places such as Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I saw a clean water and road building programme; in Juba, the capital of the newest country in Africa; and in the refugee camps in northern Kenya. That is the good, but there are also examples where aid is not being well spent. I lost count of the number of heads of DFID I saw on my travels around Africa who told me that they would struggle to get good-quality aid out of the door. We were looking for programmes and partners in many of those countries, and I was warned on a number of occasions that there were aid programmes that would not deliver and on which mistakes would be made and things would go badly wrong. I can think of at least four examples in Africa where there had been outright scandals involving British aid.

To be fair to DFID, it is taking action, but there is growing evidence that we must try to move from aid relationships with those countries to trade. Many of those countries will move to middle-income status during our political lives, and as they do so it is extremely important that we reduce the aid and move to a trade relationship. My argument at the time was that the 0.7% was not necessary, it was an ill-thought-out move, and the only reason we did it was because we made a pledge in the election campaign. That is an honourable reason for doing something, but it is the wrong reason for doing it because in many cases the 0.7% will be redundant. Furthermore, as our economy expands, that aid budget will go not just from £8 billion to £13 billion, as it has done over the past five years, but it could well be up to £20 billion-plus by the end of this Parliament if our economy grows.

You are looking at me, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I shall conclude by saying that we have a moral obligation to help the poorest in the world. I feel that very strongly. We have a moral obligation to help those who are less in need. We have a moral obligation also to educate our children and young people in this country—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I was hoping the hon. Gentleman was going to come back to defence. I thought there was an analogy coming, but my worry is that he is going to continue doing the same thing.

[Mr Bellingham]

Indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker.

We have those moral obligations to house our people, to educate them and to make sure they have good health, but if we did not provide that as a Government, in many cases the private sector would step in. However, the private sector will never step in to defend this country. We have a duty to defend our country, and that is why, of all the Departments that should be ring-fenced, Defence is the one. There is no logic whatever in ring-fencing and encapsulating in law the 0.7% unless we do the same for defence. That is why I support the Bill wholeheartedly. If we do not get it through, that will send a very bad signal not just to all those constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), but to our partners in NATO, our friends in America and many countries around the world that are looking to Britain to set an example in this crucial area.