Ministry of Defence

Debate between Lord Coaker and Lord Beamish

Monday 26th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker]

There we go—that is the power of Parliament. That is the point I am making. We had the debate before and this was fiscally neutral. The original review—the national security and defence capability review, or whatever it was—was not set up by accident; the Government set it up, and defence was included in it. Parliament said that that was not acceptable, and the Government responded and took it out. We then said that it was not acceptable for that review to be fiscally neutral, and now the Government are saying that it will not be. Of course no one is saying that we should buy chariots or whatever—what we have has to be relevant to the needs that we face. Before, the process was budget-driven: it was a case of having whatever it needed to be in order to meet the budget requirement.

It is going to be difficult for the Government to do this when, for example, we are told today that, even in their response to the Select Committee’s report on the F-35 programme, they will not put a figure on what one F-35 is going to cost. Then the Government say, “We’re buying 138 F-35s—that is the current plan—and 48 will be F-35Bs, but we’re not sure what variant the other 90 are going to be.” How can the Government talk about being fiscally neutral in their plans when they could not say to the Defence Committee a couple of months ago what the cost of the F-35 is and they cannot tell us in their response published today either?

[Mr Kevan Jones]

It is not just the F-35. Much has been said in the past few weeks about the procurement of the new Type 31e frigate. There is no line in the defence budget for that. Likewise, the P-8, which is being trumpeted as a vital need for our maritime patrol aircraft—I agree—is not capable of delivering the sonar buoys or torpedoes that are currently being used, so there is added cost there.

[Vernon Coaker]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. That is the point of the debate on estimates days. For the Minister to be able to say that we will have the capabilities that we need to meet the threats that we will face, we need to be able to say how much those capabilities are going to cost. My hon. Friend raised the issue of frigates; I am using the example of the F-35s. Cannot the Minister go back to the people who plan this and say, “We need some detail on these costs. Otherwise, how can we project forward what the equipment plan or any other plan is going to cost us?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If we do exactly what he says, we will be in a ludicrous position. We will be saying, “To facilitate scrapping Albion and Bulwark, we will modify our aircraft carriers,” which takes us into the realms of never-never land. What does that mean? We are not going to do a beach landing from an aircraft carrier. We might have a few more helicopters or a dry dock facility, but the idea of carrying out an amphibious landing from an aircraft carrier belies the point of having amphibious craft, which is to land on beaches and lay marines off on them.

[Mr Jones]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend, but that goes to the point—this was the problem back in 2010—of the Treasury being let in the door of the MOD, and being in control and in the driving seat. When I was a Minister, I chaired the finance group in the MOD when we were looking for savings and dealing with the Treasury. I know exactly what Ministers are dealing with. The Treasury does not understand the value of our armed forces and how they operate. I am glad that the Secretary of State seems to have wrestled control of that element back. If our defence policy is determined by Treasury figures, we will have very strange decisions that will not match strategic needs.

We keep hearing from the Government that they are meeting the NATO 2%. As someone who is committed to NATO and who supports it—I am a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly—I can say that that is an academic argument. It is important in that we are trying to get people to spend a minimum of 2%, but it is also important to look at what our NATO partners spend that 2% on. It is clear that the Government have rejigged the figures. I am not saying that they have done something illegal or anything like that, but in 2015, they changed how defence spending was calculated. War pensions of £820 million were included; assessments of contributions to UN peacekeeping of £400 million were included; and the pensions of retired military personnel, which was another £200 million, were included. The thick end of £1 billion of that 2% is made up of things that the hardiest defender of Government policy would not think were frontline defence commitments.

It is about being realistic. It would be fine if we were spending only 1.8% on defence but spending it on the right things. There is a case for increasing the defence budget—that argument was made by the right hon. Member for New Forest East and by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling—but we need to do it by setting strategic objectives that show why we need more than we are spending. There is also an onus on the MOD to ensure that what it is spending is not only efficient, but provides value for money for the taxpayer.

All hon. Members who have contributed to this debate have said that our armed forces are universally and rightly held in the highest regard. I agree, but it is not just national sentiment; it is because they are vital for our nation’s security and because they define our place in the world. I do not think for one minute that the new Secretary of State or his ministerial team lack commitment to the armed forces—they are all committed to defence and want to do the best for our armed forces, so I wish them well in the battle they will have with the Treasury—but without new money or a radical rethink about the commitments we ask our armed forces to fulfil, I fear for our forces’ future, and more importantly for Britain’s place in the world.