Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Robathan and Bob Ainsworth(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Robathan
The Ministry of Defence police are, sadly, as everybody else is, touched by the strategic defence and security review because of the £38 billion black hole that we were left, but I envisage a future for the Ministry of Defence police—providing security for our service personnel and their families—and I visited them in Portsmouth dockyard only last month.
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
The future of European security will be enhanced by military capability, interoperability and co-operation; it will not be enhanced by an unnecessary duplication of military headquarters. What more can we do to convince our European colleagues that that is not a sensible proposal, particularly at a time when defence budgets are falling across the continent?
Armed Forces Redundancies
Debate between Lord Robathan and Bob Ainsworth(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Mr Robathan
As far as possible, it is being done by means of natural wastage, and indeed by reducing recruiting, but, as my right hon. Friend will understand, we must continue to recruit because otherwise there will be an imbalance in the armed forces. The number that we are looking at, off the top of my head—in fact I have it here, if my right hon. Friend will wait one second—is 11,000.
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
The Minister says these cuts will have no impact on either Afghanistan or Libya, but can he confirm that, despite the leading role we have played in the Libya operation, we are providing only about 8% of the aircraft being used in the no-fly zone and the Chief of the Air Staff has today said that the Royal Air Force is stretched to breaking point? How does the Minister square the following three points: the stretch, the fact that we are providing only 8% of those aircraft, and his insistence that the cuts are having no effect on operations?
Mr Robathan
I know that the right hon. Gentleman played a very honourable part in the last Government explaining to the then Prime Minister how he was trying to increase operational capacity without increasing spending, and I know that he pointed out to the last Prime Minister that there was not enough money for our operational requirements. On the Royal Air Force in particular, as the Prime Minister said in October, and as the Chief of the Air Staff has confirmed and explicitly stated in his article, we wish to see an uplift in real-terms defence spending from 2015. The Prime Minister has said that.