Defence Treaties (France)

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

For a long time there has been a French-American bilateral relationship and an Anglo-American bilateral relationship on the nuclear deterrent. As the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), will know, there has been discussion for some time about whether the relationship should be trilateral, given the cost of the programmes, but the decision has been taken that for the moment the double bilateral relationship will continue. We are strengthening the third, Anglo-French, part of that, because we believe it is in our interests to do so for reasons of both cost-effectiveness and our obligations under the non-proliferation treaty.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

I warmly congratulate the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister on bringing to birth this long-overdue arrangement. Can the Secretary of State confirm that co-operation on the ground between the British and French armed forces has been very long standing, and will he say something about the number of formations across the armed forces that will co-operate with their French counterparts?

[Dr Fox]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his welcome. He is entirely correct that there has been long-standing co-operation. Some of the things that I have read and heard today have made it sound as though this was the first time there had been any military co-operation at all between the United Kingdom and France. Beginning with joint exercising next year, we will examine ways in which we can organically take forward co-operation such as we have outlined today. There is no big bang—this is about working out how we can best improve the relationship incrementally and build confidence over a long period, given the complexities of Afghanistan and so on.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Arbuthnot]

That, of course, is also what the Committee thinks.

One of the Committee’s principal objections is that the lack of general consultation may create a greater sense of disconnection between the Government’s decisions and the understanding of the people at large on defence issues. With regard to the public view of defence, there is a gap between what politicians say and what the public believe. In relation to Iraq, the British people became, towards the end of our engagement there, broadly opposed, mostly because of the very poor planning on what to do after we had won the war. There is a great degree of scepticism about the purpose of our deployment in Afghanistan. In my view, our people would support our deployment to Afghanistan if they thought we had a good strategy for winning, but at the moment they do not think that.

That gap between the public view and the country’s policy is both very important and deeply worrying. The SDSR was an opportunity to narrow the gap, but because of the speed with which it is being carried out, that opportunity has been missed. We in the defence community must therefore do all we can, not only in the UK but across Europe, to explain defence policy and our defence needs to the public. Without such communication, notwithstanding the country’s general support for the armed forces, defence will suffer.

That contrasts with the 1997-98 defence review, which was announced during the Queen’s Speech in May 1997 and reported, later than originally expected, just over 13 months later in July 1998. There was a good deal of consultation during the preparation of that review. The Defence Committee of the day played its part in that, holding 12 evidence sessions while the review was in preparation and eight more afterwards. It also produced a weighty three-volume report on the review—I do not know whether anybody read it, but at least somebody had the time to write it. It was a good review, but I would make two points about it. First, it ended up being underfunded, because it was overtaken by events. Secondly, I would caution the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the shadow Defence Secretary, because it was held at a time when the British economy was strong, the Labour Government having received one of the best economic legacies in the history of this country. Before the shadow Secretary of State makes too much of his suggestion that this one is a cost-cutting farce—

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will just make this one comment, while I am in full flow, to the shadow Secretary of State. Before he makes too much of his suggestion that this review is a cost-cutting farce, he should reflect with an appropriate amount of humility on who got us into our current economic mess and on why the defence budget is such a shambles.

[Nicholas Soames]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that not only was that review not funded, but there was clearly a determination that it should not be funded, given that when these matters were discussed in the House, those on both sides agreed that the review would work only if it was properly funded and they signed up to it on that basis?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

My hon. Friend is entirely right; the problem was that the then Chancellor was not naturally enthusiastic about the issue of defence as a whole, and we saw the same thing when the defence industrial strategy was produced. Again, that was an extremely useful document, which was signed up to by the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He subsequently became the Secretary of State for Defence and discovered that he actually did not have the money to put that strategy into effect, any more than we had earlier had the money to put into proper effect an excellent 1998 defence review.

So now that I have antagonised absolutely everyone, I shall end by saying what I hope to see from the review. I hope and expect that its end result will be a changed Ministry of Defence, which is focused more on the threats of the present and the future than on the old cold war structures of the past. I hope to see an element of coherence, so that our future looks significantly better than our present. I hope and expect that the improvements that could be made to the way in which we buy our defence equipment will be far-reaching and helpful. I hope and believe that the result of the reductions in Government spending will be to strengthen the economy of the United Kingdom in such a way as to give us the chance to renew our defence industry. I hope, but fear I may not see it, that we can reverse, as we should, the reductions in our spending on research and technology. I also hope, although I am not at all confident, that enough of our defence structure will remain to take full advantage of the economic revival.

Military Bases

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Ministerial Corrections

[Nicholas Soames]

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many permanent UK military headquarters there are; where each is located; who has command at each such headquarters; and what the staff is of each.

[Official Report, 20 July 2010, Vol. 514, c. 182-84W.]

Letter of correction from Andrew Robathan:

Errors have been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) on 20 July 2010.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Robathan]

[holding answer 15 July 2010]: There are five permanent military headquarters (HQ) in the UK. Details of the location, who has command and staff employed at each are shown in the following table:

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I am going to make a little progress, as I know that a large number of Members wish to speak in this debate.

NATO will remain our first instrument of choice for responding to the collective security challenges that we face. In the past decade, NATO has moved outside its traditional geographic area, with European allies such as Germany deploying troops abroad in ways that would have been inconceivable a decade ago. Of course, NATO is not perfect, and we are keen to streamline command structures and decision-making processes. We began that process at the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels last week, making more progress than most of us expected. However, we must use every lever at our disposal—including the Commonwealth, the UN, the EU and other regional organisations—to protect our security in an uncertain, unstable and unpredictable world.

We will look to step up cross-Government overseas engagement. Defence co-operation is an important component of that, particularly with nations who share our interests and are prepared both to pay and to fight, such as France. We intend to ensure—and consequently fund—a defence diplomacy programme in the SDSR that can make an important contribution to our global influence. Clearly we need close consultation with our allies on the SDSR. I had a good opportunity to engage in early exchanges at the recent NATO ministerial meeting, and I will follow up with detailed discussions with our closest allies. In particular, I intend to visit Washington in the near future to take forward discussions already begun there.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

I warmly welcome what the Secretary of State has said about defence diplomacy. Does he agree that, inevitably in an age of restraint, defence diplomacy is an extremely important and effective asset for this Government and something that this country has historically done well? Does he also agree that to pare back our work in defence diplomacy at this time would be to cut off our nose to spite our face?

[Dr Fox]

I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. Not only is defence diplomacy effective; it is cost-effective. It provides this country with great overseas influence at relatively little cost, compared with other elements of the defence budget. We are very foolish as a country if we ever ignore the fact that joint exercising, training and defence exports can achieve a great deal for this country at a relatively low cost. In recent years there has been too much penny-pinching in certain areas, which has had a disproportionately negative effect on this country’s influence, and a good deal too much short-termism, when we need to be looking at what we do well and doing it more often.