Defence Review

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, we are deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, for giving us the opportunity for this debate today, as well as for giving the House the opportunity to respond by showing the pent-up demand for a proper defence debate that lasts all day. I hope that the powers that be have taken note of that response. I am left with about one and half minutes to make three points.

The first point is that, like everybody else, and any responsible citizen of this country and Members on both sides of the House, I hope to heaven that the Government are not planning any more defence cuts after the terrible way in which our defence capability has been run down over the past seven or eight years. It would be utterly unjustifiable; the world has not in any sense become a less dangerous place, and there is no justification whatever for that.

My second point is that, on that positive assumption that the Government do not have those plans—it really would be horrific if they did—I hope that they will put an end to the uncertainty by making a clear statement that there will not be any further defence cuts. The moment that comes up in any conversation that anybody has with serving military personnel, officers or other ranks, there is a real worry on that subject. I am sure that many colleagues have had such conversations in the past few weeks and months. This is really affecting morale, and it must be affecting recruitment. This is a quite unnecessary cost to impose on our military, on top of everything else. I hope, therefore, that clarity can be established very quickly.

My third point is this: I gather one reason why the MoD has run into financial problems recently has been the devaluation of sterling, and the higher sterling price as a result of procurement from the United States and, to some extent, the European Union, of the A400M programme. I suppose that the F35 is the major issue here. I hope we can have a statement on this from the Minister to put our minds at rest, because one thing that is absolutely clear is that under no circumstances should the military be made to pay the price for that devaluation. In no sense whatever is it the military’s fault. This is a direct result of government policy to hold the referendum and, afterwards, to decide—quite gratuitously, in my view—to understand it as excluding us from the single market and the customs union. This is having a devastating effect on the economy, of course, but it is nothing to do with the military, and the military should not be made responsible for it or have to suffer for it. That would be utterly unjust and irrational.