Iran (Nuclear Talks)

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

No.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s determination to make progress on the nuclear issues, but will he reassure the House that he will continue to stand up for persecuted religious minorities in Iran—in particular Pastor Saeed Abedini, who has been locked up for two years without access to legal representation or medical treatment under this brutal regime?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes. Iran’s human rights record is poor, to put it mildly, and while there have been some limited steps in the right direction, it is clear that a huge amount remains to be done. We do raise human rights issues with the Iranians on a regular basis. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the particular problem of religious persecution and the unwarranted imprisonment of those practising minority religions in Iran.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Monday 14th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

We have made it clear that we believe there are two steps. The first is a political solution to the situation in Iraq. Iraq must have an inclusive Government in order to rally the Iraqi security forces and to be able to provide an appropriate defence against the ISIS incursion. Our focus at the moment is on encouraging the formation of such an inclusive Government in Baghdad. Once a Government with broad legitimacy in the country is established, we will be open to considering requests for technical advice and support from that Government to reinforce the Iraqi security forces.

[John Glen]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s initial answer. Does he agree with me that it is critical for the UK to remain close to all the regional players, including Jordan and Qatar, so that maximum influence can be brought to bear if any of these individual countries get drawn into Iraq’s internal security challenges in different ways?

[Mr Hammond]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is vital that we remain engaged with the key countries in the region, and we will do so. It is vital, too, that we are acutely mindful of the pressures that the Governments of Jordan and Lebanon are under as a result of what is going on in Syria and Iraq. These are two very important countries, and we will do everything we can to support them in these difficult times.

Afghanistan

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

It is not directly designed to support the security operation; it is designed to support the good administration of the elections. We have also allocated funds to increasing the participation of female candidates, and providing the training and capacity building that will enable more of them to take part in the election.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Given the unfortunate gap between our hopes and aspirations and the time taken to achieve our goals in Afghanistan, can my right hon. Friend tell us why he is so sure that Afghan forces possess enough resilience to handle the expected intensification of violence at the end of 2014? In what circumstances would the supporting role of British troops intensify after that date to ensure that this country’s sacrifices were not wasted?

[Mr Hammond]

As the House would expect, I make my judgments about military matters—in particular, the resilience and capability or otherwise of any particular forces—on the basis of military advice, and that is the military advice that I am receiving. However, I am not sure that my hon. Friend is necessarily right in seeing nothing but a reinforcement of the insurgency after the end of 2014. On the one hand, ISAF will not be present in the same numbers or in the same role, but on the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that the presence of foreign forces has been one of the great recruiting sergeants of the insurgency, and that the removal of foreign forces changes the dynamics. There are definitely Afghans who would have signed up to the insurgency to fight foreign soldiers but do not wish to join up and kill their Afghan brothers in the ANSF.

Armed Forces Restructuring

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I know that Opposition Members do not like it being said that we inherited a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget. We have dealt with that and we have put in place a balanced equipment plan that is fully funded with a contingency of £4.5 billion in it. More importantly, we have put in place mechanisms to ensure that projects do not get signed off willy-nilly by politicians when the resources are not in place to pay for them. That ensures that we have a coherent defence budget and that we never again find ourselves in the position of the former Labour Defence Secretary Lord Hutton who, for the want of £300 million over two years, was forced to delay the aircraft carrier project and drive £1.6 billion of additional costs into that programme. We will not get ourselves into that position.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Some of my constituents have been alarmed by recent reports of unfilled vacancies in key roles such as intelligence officers, radiologists and electronic warfare system operators. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the announcement today will take account of the need to maintain all capabilities and avoid expensive short-term replacements from outside the armed services?

[Mr Hammond]

As I said in an earlier reply, we will not be making any redundancies in those pinch-point fields. We face, across the armed forces, a number of areas in which we directly compete with very highly paid civilian occupations. I am talking about engineering of all types—nuclear, aircraft and airworthiness speciality skills. In those areas, it is a constant challenge to recruit and retain staff, but those are challenges that the single services manage extraordinarily effectively in the circumstances.

IT Systems (Army Recruitment)

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Complex IT problems are common in the public and private sectors. It is important that steps have been taken to put the problems right. Will my right hon. Friend come back to the House in the near future to convince us that the targets on the recruitment of regulars and reserves are being met, so that the wider public can be confident that the problems have been resolved?

[Mr Hammond]

As was mentioned by the shadow Secretary of State, just before Christmas I published the trajectory of recruiting targets for the reserves that we will have to meet to deliver on our commitment of 30,000 trained reservists by 2018. I have given the House a commitment that we will publish the out-turn figures on a quarterly basis. Aside from the numbers, anyone who looks at the Army recruiting website will start to see measurable, noticeable improvements by the end of this month, as some of the interim solutions start to take effect.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

If I may say so, it is a bit rich for the right hon. Gentleman, who last week trooped into the Lobby behind the leader of his party, giving rise to the very situation in which we now find ourselves, to demand that I tell him precisely in which circumstances we might revisit this issue. I have already said to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) that we believe that Parliament has spoken clearly on this issue, and is unlikely to want to revisit it unless the circumstances change very significantly.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to strengthen the military covenant.

Army Basing Plan

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I hope the hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that he has 82 unanswered parliamentary questions; if so, I would be extremely interested to hear about it. The closure of Craigiehall results in a reduction of 27 military personnel on the site but, as he rightly says, there will also be some civilians there. As of today, we will engage with the trade unions in the usual way to talk about how we manage the impact of these closures on civilian staff, and we will of course do everything we can to minimise the effects.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement of £800 million of investment in and around Salisbury plain, which will also be welcomed by my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry). Will he set out the profile of the spending of that £800 million and assure my constituents and the people of south Wiltshire that there will be a significant dividend in extra civilian jobs over the coming years?

Afghanistan

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

That is a very good question. It is probably fair to characterise ISAF as having had rather poor human intelligence capability and having relied on very sophisticated electronic and other technological intelligence gathering. We will not be able to replicate in the ANSF a similar level of high-tech intelligence gathering, but I am pretty confident that what the ANSF will lack in that regard will be more than made up for by its human intelligence capability. Members of the ANSF have an intuitive understanding of what is going on in local communities that gives them a touch and feel for the local area that ISAF troops, however long they stay there, will never have.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Given what my right hon. Friend has said about the inherent risks of reversibility in the security situation, what plans are in place if there is a significant change in what is anticipated over the next couple of years so that, if there is not the training and leadership capability among the Afghan population, we have the flexibility to implement different plans and that our hard-won gains are not lost by the end of 2014?

[Mr Hammond]

Of course, we retain flexibility in our plans, but I would not wish to mislead my hon. Friend: our clear intention is to end our combat operations by the end of 2014, along with the rest of our ISAF partners. By setting that clear target, we have set the Afghans a target and all the evidence is that they are stepping up to the plate with alacrity and delivering on—indeed, exceeding—our expectations of their ability to respond to that challenge.

Future Reserves 2020

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As my hon. Friend will see when he reads the Green Paper, it contains a section that talks about extending the armed forces covenant appropriately to cover reserves. On supporting families, he is absolutely right, although we face a different challenge because reservist families, by definition, do not live in military communities and are dispersed, so this has to be done in a different way. Access to the regular military support apparatus, for example, the military health care, dental facilities and mental health facilities, is a crucial part of the package.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I acknowledge the broad support of the Federation of Small Businesses and the massive contribution made by large employers, but may I ask the Secretary of State to reflect on the situation of micro-businesses and businesses that have between five and 10 employees? It is crucial to develop a realistic package to provide the incentives for business owners to release their staff to participate, particularly in areas such as Salisbury, where there is great enthusiasm to do so.

[Mr Hammond]

The consultation is designed exactly to explore with different types of employer in different sectors and of different sizes how best we can work with them, recognising that different challenges are faced by different types of business.

Army 2020

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Many of my Salisbury constituents have expressed concern that the increased number of reservists used to mitigate the impact of today’s cuts will not prevent a loss of capability. Will the Secretary of State reiterate why he is confident that there will not be an emerging capability gap as a result of today’s announcements?

[Mr Hammond]

Because the Chief of the General Staff and the team carrying this work have presented me with a plan for the future Army, which they tell me will be able to deliver the output requirements of the strategic defence and security review. I have confidence in their professionalism.

Defence Budget and Transformation

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. The knowledge that there is a £4 billion contingency budget will be hugely reassuring for the defence industry when it looks at the overall programme and decides how to invest its own money in the technologies and skills needed to deliver it. However, I urge the company in her constituency not to think that the £4 billion is there to accommodate its cost overrun.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

In warmly welcoming today’s announcement, may I ask the Secretary of State to go further and assure the House that when he reviews the options for the organisational model that the Chief of Defence Matériel believes will be best for the future of the Defence Equipment and Support organisation, he will challenge them robustly on their capacity to deliver real, radical organisational and cultural change in that organisation so that decisions are made in the right way in the future?

[Mr Hammond]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance, but I do not underestimate the scale of the task. As DE&S is structured at the moment, we are seeking to employ project managers to manage some of the world’s largest and most complex projects and we are seeking to do it on civil service pay. That is challenging.

Carrier Strike Capability

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

A first-week midshipman could probably tell the hon. Gentleman that it is not normal to order a 65,000 tonne STOVL carrier without any cats and traps. With regard to the hon. Gentleman’s question on Rosyth, no decision has been taken on where the carriers will be maintained in future.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

It is widely alleged by some that the through-life costs of the F-35B could compare unfavourably with those of the F-35C. What rigorous assessment has my right hon. Friend undertaken to ensure that we achieve value for money, having made this decision, and what wider lessons on the defence budget can be drawn for similarly important and large decisions in future?

[Mr Hammond]

To answer the last question first, I am drawing some very interesting conclusions about how to manage the defence budget on an ongoing basis and hope to share them with the House shortly. It is precisely because the F-35C variant, on the face of it, has a lower purchase cost and a lower through-life maintenance cost that this option was pursued at the time of the SDSR 2010, but operating the carrier variant will of course require the installation upfront of the catapults and arrester gears, which we now know will cost in the order of £2 billion and rising. On the basis of a properly discounted cash-flow analysis over 30 years, I am clear that the STOVL variant, given the current estimate of the cost of cats and traps, will now be cheaper.

Afghanistan (Troop Levels)

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Thursday 26th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The right hon. Gentleman is a real dyed-in-the-wool glass-half-empty man. I have not announced that we will commit our forces for another 32 months. The Prime Minister announced early last year that we would have them out of a combat role by the end of 2014. That is a good news story, as is the fact that in the interim, all the ISAF nations are focused on creating an ANSF that can take over our role and maintain security in Afghanistan.

In the meantime, everybody in the House ought to be extremely proud of the social and economic development in central Helmand. There are significantly more schools, hospitals, clinics, bazaars, and bridges. Over the past six months, the British Army has built the biggest bridge that it has constructed since the second world war. All those things allow ordinary people in Helmand province to resume their normal life, grow their income and make mainstream Afghan society more and more attractive to those who have previously been attracted by the insurgency.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

My concern is that the current residual threat is not a reliable indicator of what precisely will happen post-2014. What assurance can the Secretary of State give the House that the likely change or intensification of threats from without Afghanistan in 2015 are being properly examined and acknowledged in the training being received now by the ANSF?

[Mr Hammond]

The strategic threats are acknowledged in, and form a core part of, ISAF’s thinking. I do not know whether my hon. Friend had a particular aspect in mind, but it is clear to us that building a sustainable and reliable relationship with Pakistan and ensuring the security of the border with Pakistan will be fundamental to the future of Afghanistan.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and John Glen

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

My departmental responsibilities are to ensure that our country is properly defended, now and in the future, through the delivery of the military tasks for which the MOD is mandated; that our service personnel have the right equipment and training to allow them to succeed in the military tasks; and that we honour our armed forces covenant. In order to discharge those duties, I have a clear responsibility to ensure that the Department has a properly balanced budget and a force generation strategy and a defence equipment programme that are affordable and sustainable in the medium to long term.

I am deeply aware that our people are the greatest assets of the armed forces, and I am sure that all Members of the House will want to join me in wishing all of them, especially those who are away from home over the festive period, a happy and a safe Christmas.

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. Will he update the House on the status of the service chiefs' review of force generation and sustainability, which among other things was looking at harmony guidelines? I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be aware that if he adopted the Navy’s harmony guidelines, he would secure a significant saving across the MOD.

[Mr Hammond]

The single service chiefs are reviewing force generation issues in the light of the proposed change structure of the armed forces. The issues around harmony are different in the three services, and it is right that the individual services develop harmony guidelines that are right for their conditions and allow them to operate within their single service budgets.