Nuclear Submarines

Lord Walney Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As my right hon. Friend says, Governments of both persuasions over the years have adopted a prudent and precautionary approach to the safety of our nuclear submarine fleet, and have invested money, where it is necessary to do so, on the basis that safety always takes priority. As I have said, the decisions that I am announcing today are not driven by concerns about safety. There is no safety risk identified from this incident. They are driven primarily by concerns about future submarine availability.

The information on core burn is classified, but I can reassure the House that the percentage of core burn on the reactor at Dounreay exceeds by far the percentage of core burn on any of our operational reactors.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Continuous at-sea deterrence is of course the foundation of our deterrent policy. As the Secretary of State knows much better than I do, it requires not only the Vanguard-class submarines to be continuously at sea, but the Trafalgar and the Astute classes to be around. The worst-case scenario would be the refuelling of all Vanguard and Astute submarines. Does he have complete confidence that CASD would be maintained if that were to happen, and what additional capacity would be needed to carry out such an extensive venture?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman asks sensible questions, but he is verging into speculative matters at this stage. This is a very tiny flaw in a reactor that has been hammered at maximum output over a long time. It is premature to suggest that when we examine the core we will find some systemic need to refuel all other reactors of a similar type. That is not the expectation. However, as he would expect, we will plan for every contingency, and the measures that I have announced will allow us to preserve the option of refuelling further Vanguard and Astute submarines should that be deemed expedient in the future.

Defence and Cyber-security

Lord Walney Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I do, and I hope that in answering the debate my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces will take that point straight on the chin, because in many respects the armed forces are the resource of last resort, and cyber-security may be an area where the armed forces do not accept that responsibility.

There is a necessary focus within the defence world on securing the systems and networks needed by the MOD and the armed forces from cyber-threats. It is not only contemporary civil society that is utterly dependent on network technology; our armed forces are increasingly reliant on such technology for the tools of warfare, and the next step must be to ensure that the supply chain for those systems and their components is secure. That will require a trusting, transparent relationship between Government and their suppliers, with full disclosure of attacks and possible vulnerabilities, which runs all the way down the supply chain. The UK has world-class expertise and facilities on which to draw, but will the Government be able, in competition with the private sector, to keep enough of that expertise and experience in the service of the state? Are there enough such people to serve both and how should we prioritise?

The announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence in September 2013 about the establishment of a joint cyber reserve unit is a significant development, but that will rely on FTSE companies and other, smaller companies releasing key personnel to participate. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces tell us what progress has been made? According to the Government, the number of ICT and cyber-security professionals in the UK has not increased in line with the growth of the internet. Are there enough experts in industry willing to join a cyber reserve? Will technology experts—the geeks of our world—fit well within highly regimented military structures, or will a more flexible structure be required to facilitate their work?

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman is rightly raising just some of the myriad questions about the future in cyberspace. Does he agree that these questions are so wide-ranging and fluid, given the incredible acceleration in technology, as to pose the question whether in future we should have vari-speed defence and security reviews? On larger items we should look beyond the 10-year horizon, but in cyber, five years is far too long for what is happening.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), the hon. Gentleman contributes effectively to the Defence Committee and makes an interesting point—one I had not heard before. That is the value of these debates. We will all have to think about that issue.

We must seek to defend ourselves, but we must also, as has been suggested, expect to develop a capability to respond to threats in cyberspace. When doing that, we face some of the same considerations as when developing conventional military capabilities. Where does the balance lie between international collaboration and sovereign capability, for example? What sort of international arrangements will best suit our aims?

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State also talked about how the UK was developing a full spectrum military cyber-capability, including strike capability. This is an interesting and novel declaration. Everybody knows it has happened but nobody has been prepared before now to announce it. Will this declaration act as a deterrent or will it make the UK a more likely target for hacktivists and foreign states? What about the legal implications of establishing a strike capability for the personnel involved? The necessary rules of engagement for cyber-attack need to be put in place, although of course we will not be told about them.

Some maintain that cyber is just another military domain and that we can expect to do everything in cyberspace that we do in the air, on land or at sea to prevent, deter coerce or intervene. But has the distinctiveness of the cyber domain been fully grasped? It is not clear, for example, that deterrence is a concept that can apply to a domain where there are real difficulties in discovering quickly who has perpetrated an attack and for what purpose, or even that an attack has taken place. Neither is it clear that everyone has grasped how important it is to avoid a silo approach to the cyberworld. It is essential to break down the dividing lines between civilian and military, among Government Departments, between Government and the private sector, and between our country and other countries, and therefore to approach the issue in an holistic way. Paul Dwyer of Mandiant came to brief the Defence Committee and told us that it takes a network to defeat a network.

Perhaps because the threat cannot be neatly categorised, it may be unrealistic to expect a neat categorisation of the responses. Everything we have been told in the UK emphasises that the armed forces have a very limited role, protecting their own systems and developing military cyber-capabilities. For other areas of activity, those in the lead are likely to be based elsewhere, particularly in the intelligence services. That is where the important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury comes in.

Afghanistan

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

There are two separate points here. First, the equipment that was bought for Afghanistan through urgent operational requirements, especially armoured vehicles, represents a significant investment and we are repatriating it into core. All armoured vehicles except those that are damaged beyond economic repair will be returned to the UK and brought back into the core equipment fleet.

On the question of reserves, we have made a commitment that the reserves will increasingly in the future train on and use the same equipment as the regular forces. We have already started to deliver on that commitment by rolling out new deliveries of equipment to reserve units across the country. The pool of equipment will be joint, for the use of the integrated force—regulars and reserves.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Our fundamental mission in Afghanistan was of course to improve the security of the British people, rather than any improvement in the living conditions of Afghans. Does the Secretary of State agree, however, that the two go hand in hand? If we leave behind a more progressive country, it is more likely to remain an enduring ally of the United Kingdom in the decades ahead. Will he agree to look again at our principles for future intervention to ensure that making countries more progressive and upholding our values remain a fundamental part of what we are about as a country?

[Mr Hammond]

Let me answer that question this way: it is clear that our immediate mission was to deny Afghanistan to terrorists who would have used it as a base to strike at us and our allies and interests. But in the long term, it was never going to be a credible proposition that foreign forces could hold this territory. We had to build a stable and capable state in Afghanistan with a security force of its own that could do that job. My judgment is that a country that has a basic rule of law and recognises human rights will be a more stable and sustainable place in the future. A country that has education, health care and infrastructure will engage the loyalty of its citizens in a way that Afghan Governments have not always done in the past. We have to be very careful about the tone of this debate, however. It is not about exporting our perfect model of society and imposing it on others who in many fundamental respects will not accept some of the tenets that we regard as basic to our everyday existence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The clear stated intention, which was subsequently borne out by events, was that the Kuznetsov carrier task group would proceed from Russia to the eastern Mediterranean, where it currently is. In accordance with the pattern of its last deployment, it stopped in the relatively sheltered waters of the Moray firth to re-oil on its way to the eastern Mediterranean. This is all perfectly normal procedure, and it was notified to NATO in advance.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does not the debate on this issue underline the importance of our combined—UK—Royal Navy, and also the potential in the strategic NATO alliance? Does the Secretary of State not agree that, in the words of another political figure, it would be “unpardonable folly” to put at risk that NATO alliance by disavowing the very strategic nuclear concept on which it is based?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is right on all counts. NATO’s strategic nuclear concept of course provides protection for the whole of the United Kingdom. Our very close relationship with our NATO allies—in this case, specifically with Norway—ensures that we have good visibility and good intelligence about Russian vessels and, indeed, Russian aircraft approaching the UK’s area of interest.

Armed Forces Restructuring

Lord Walney Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend has a good point. The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) lectures me from the Opposition Front Bench, but it is noticeable that during that long period after 2001 when there appeared to be no limit to the scale of public spending and no limit to the level of taxation and borrowing and spending that the then Government were prepared to engage in, the armed forces did not share in that cornucopia and the consequences are here for all of us to see today.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Conservative party continued to promise a larger Army even once the scale of the challenge facing our public finances and the country was known. Does he accept that that did a disservice to the British public and the armed forces on whom we rely?

[Mr Hammond]

I know that Opposition Members do not like this, but the truth is that we discovered a black hole in the finances of the Ministry of Defence that had to be dealt with if we were going to have sustainable armed forces in the future and eliminate our armed forces being asked to deploy without the equipment and protective personal equipment that they required to do so safely. We had to put that right. That has meant that some tough decisions have been made, but my understanding is that the Opposition accept the restructuring and resizing of our armed forces and that we have to have an Army of 82,000 going forward. If I am wrong about that, I should be happy to be corrected from the Front Bench and to have an explanation of how the Opposition propose to pay for a larger Army.

IT Systems (Army Recruitment)

Lord Walney Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and recruiting ex-regulars is an important part of our strategy for building the reserves, not least because ex-regulars drop straight to the trained strength if their regular Army service is recent enough. As he will know, we are currently offering an enlistment bounty for ex-regulars to join the reserves, which reflects some part of the cost saving that we make through not having to take ex-regular recruits through the full reserve training process.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

This administrative quagmire is the latest part of what is becoming a worrying and costly pattern of events under the Secretary of State’s stewardship. He had a good reputation for competence around Whitehall before he took up his latest job. What has happened?

[Mr Hammond]

The important thing in a Department as large and complex as the Ministry of Defence, with a budget of £33 billion a year, is not to pretend that we can operate the vast range of contracts and arrangements we have in place without some failures. That is never going to happen. The challenge is to grip failure when it becomes apparent, and to manage and resolve it as quickly and efficiently as possible. I am prepared to stand on my record of delivering that kind of outcome.

Defence Procurement

Lord Walney Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a long history of failure in defence procurement by Governments of both main parties going back decades. We now have to construct a model that works. As I just said to the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the former Defence Secretary, we can do a lot within the public sector in DE&S plus, but we cannot make the culture change that some people think is necessary. It is right and proper that we do what we can in the public sector to make DE&S, as a public sector body, as high a bar as we can for a private sector challenger to have to match and exceed, but we should not be afraid, once we have done our internal reform work, to allow the private sector to make proposals again to see whether it could deliver yet more value for money for the taxpayer. That is, after all, our principal responsibility.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

There was surely no reason the Secretary of State had to wait until the GoCo option had collapsed before coming forward with these amended DE&S plus proposals. Does that not show that he was never truly neutral on the choice between an in-house option and a GoCo, that he wanted to rig the process in favour of a GoCo, and that that bias has blown up in his face, costing taxpayers and his own personal reputation?

[Mr Hammond]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that his Front-Bench spokesman welcomed the competition and said that we needed to test the GoCo proposition against the DE&S plus proposition—

Defence Reform Bill

Lord Walney Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. As the process goes forward, there is obviously a lot of concern among people who work in defence procurement. It is important that things are brought to a conclusion so that they can have some reassurance. It will be interesting to see how the process goes ahead with just one bidder. We need to ensure that that is scrutinised in the other place, as I am sure it will be. I hope that the Minister will keep us informed in the House about that ongoing process.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

One of the key concerns was that if a new provider was created to run the GoCo it would effectively be difficult for another provider ever to come in and take it on. Are not those concerns aggravated by the fact that we have only one bidder going through the process to start with?

[Mr Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and for his work in Committee. He raises an interesting point, as one of the concerns raised in Committee was what would happen after the nine-year process as regards renegotiating the contract. We will now have only one contractor who, if successful, will certainly be in pole position come the renegotiation at the end of the contract, whether or not any others are able to bid. We must consider those issues very carefully in the coming months as the process develops.

The other issues on which we spent a lot of time and about which there are still concerns are those on intellectual property and single-source procurement, about which we had numerous discussions in Committee. I think that industry still has concerns on those points. Part of the process is about not only reassuring the work force but ensuring confidence about working with the defence sector, because it is a major employer in this country. It is also important to ensure that we are at the leading edge of not only defence technology but security technology. Full involvement of the sector throughout the process will be very important. I think that the Bill will have an interesting passage through the other place.

We spent most of the afternoon on the reserves part of the Bill. I reiterate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), the shadow Secretary of State: Labour Members—and Members generally—look with pride on the contribution that reservists make to our armed forces. I have seen them at first hand, in both Iraq and Afghanistan; they are very brave men and women, doing a fantastic job on our behalf.

On the process ahead, I welcome the Government’s slight change of heart on producing an annual report. May I say thank you to the Secretary of State for including mental health in that report? If he wishes for any assistance with the organisation involved, in terms of how it approaches that, I am quite willing to engage, or point him in the direction of other organisations that will be interested in knowing how mental health can be seen as a priority, because there is an issue, whether we like it or not, with reservists and mental health. I know that the Government have followed through on work that we did in government and have added to that, in terms of making sure that veterans’ mental health is seen as a priority.

On the overall position of reservists, after this afternoon’s debate, I would say that the jury was still out, but we did get some clarification from the Secretary of State on the reduction in the Regular Army. Remember, when the strategic defence and security review was first announced by the Prime Minister, there was to have been a reduction of 7,000; then the figure went down from 95,000 to 80,000. I think the Secretary of State was very candid this afternoon: that was about money, not about what was best for our armed forces.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

We have not yet contracted but, as I said in response to the question asked by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), we believe that the costs of replacing the Trident deterrent will fall within the estimates set out in the 2006 White Paper. I should say to my hon. Friend that we have made significant strides to reform the way in which the submarine enterprise is conducted, and we believe that the MOD has a much firmer control of the enterprise’s cost base than has previously been the case.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman keeping an open mind about the timetable? If experts and the industry tell him that there could be a more cost-effective solution for the taxpayer if the main-gate decision were to come earlier than the scheduled date of 2016, will he be alive to that, rather than sticking to the current agreement within the coalition?

Defence Reform Bill

Lord Walney Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Murphy]

You know me well, Mr Deputy Speaker. Since we were serious, we have always said—[Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] Sorry: since we are being serious about our nation’s defence and have a passing affection for the public’s opinion, we have always said that we are committed to the minimum credible independent nuclear deterrent, which we believe is best delivered through a continuous at-sea deterrent. It would require a substantial body of evidence for us to change that view, but the review published today does not appear to offer such evidence. We will continue to scrutinise today’s report on the grounds of capability, cost and disarmament. Labour will also continue to look at ways in which a minimum, credible, independent nuclear deterrent can be delivered most efficiently, based on protecting our capability, delivering value for money and advancing disarmament objectives.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

If you will permit me for a moment to continue straying off the topic slightly, Mr Deputy Speaker, may I put on the record the fact that the shadow Defence team deserves a great deal of credit for keeping both sides of the House on the right path, both for the thousands of jobs in my constituency and for our future defence for generations ahead?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. May I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he should try to hold back his speech for tomorrow? I would not want him to use it all up today, and I think he got the point across.