Andrew Bowie
Main Page: Andrew Bowie (Conservative - West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine)Department Debates - View all Andrew Bowie's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) on securing this debate. It is nice to speak in a debate where there is such consensus in the room.
The year 2017 was supposed to be the year of the Navy. As the former Secretary of State said, it was
“the start of a new era of maritime power, projecting Britain’s influence globally and delivering security at home.”
This year has seen unprecedented levels of building and investment in the Royal Navy, creating a backdrop for the first ever mounting of a guard by the senior service at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. Undeniably, this has been a year of historic significance for the Royal Navy and British sea power.
A key part of our sea power and a key strategic part of our non-nuclear deterrence is our amphibious capability. As former First Sea Lord Admiral Zambellas told the Select Committee on Defence:
“Nobody in the world of complex warfare…thinks that a reduction in the sophisticated end of amphibiosity is a good idea.”
Unfortunately, in a year that has otherwise been positive for the senior service, that is in fact what we are discussing.
Only four other countries in the world can boast such a strong amphibious capability: the United States, China, Russia and France, which happen to be the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. That capability is integrated into NATO, serving a key role there. Its primary role for much of the cold war was reinforcing our northern flank; it was strategically crucial in controlling access to the North sea and the Atlantic. Who can tell whether such a role might not be required again in the near future?
We know how any downgrading of our amphibious capability will be received in foreign capitals: with great delight, I am sure, in Moscow, and with great disappointment in Washington. Only last week, General Ben Hodges of the US army said of potential cuts to our amphibious capability:
“I’d hate to lose that particular capability...Whenever you take something off the table unilaterally, then you’ve just made the job a little simpler for a potential adversary.”
What we are debating is the potential loss of 1,000 marines and our landing platform dock vessels HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion. I urge the Government to discard any suggestion of decommissioning either of those specialised world-leading ships. If we got rid of our LPDs, would we ever recover that lost capability?
Although in this debate we are making the case for protecting the Royal Marines and the fleet, we must also be clear that any progress on the issue must not come at the expense of other areas of military spending. Last week, in an answer to my written question, the Ministry of Defence confirmed that quick reaction alert Typhoon aircraft launched from RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Coningsby intercepted aircraft on 12 occasions in 2016. That shows beyond any doubt the importance of our Typhoon squadrons and why we must not eschew the need for our new F-35s, which are planned to become a core part of our defence capabilities in that area.
It must also be recognised that the Government will struggle to make any significant savings from the Army without jeopardising our capability on that front. In an answer to another written question—
Andrew Bowie
I found out two weeks ago that of the Army’s current strength of 70,000, almost 18,000 soldiers fall into the medical deployability standard categories “medically limited deployable” or “medically not deployable”. We need to spend more on our armed forces. In an incredibly uncertain and unstable world, for our allies and dependencies, we must fund our armed forces properly so that they can do the jobs we need and ask them to do.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
I think I was, and I will continue to do so.
Three distinct and unique capabilities underpin the strategic context. As General Sir Richard Barrons elucidated, the failure of the 2015 SDSR was that
“at no time in that review has the amount of resources provided to defence matched the programme”
of which defence capability through amphibious programmes is a part. The talk that I hear from people who know a lot more about it than anyone here is that the First Sea Lord has been presented with a scenario whereby one of these capabilities must be sacrificed. Admiral Sir George Zambellas’s comments in the Committee last week have been quoted, but I will quote what he said in full:
“I imagine the First Sea Lord has a choice between having his left arm cut off or his right arm cut off. Nobody in the world of complex warfare, especially for an island nation that delivers force from the sea, thinks that a reduction in the sophisticated end of amphibiosity is a good idea.”
On the practicalities of the SDSR, no one would expect projecting maritime power, such as the plan to commission HMS Queen Elizabeth next month, to be considered expendable. I also place it on record that the carriers are in no way adequate as replacements for Ocean, Albion or Bulwark, as has been mentioned. That leaves two arms to be cut off. I am not sure that we would have had as many hon. Members along to talk about the Royal Marines had the subject for debate been, “Why the UK’s amphibious capability should be prioritised over the continuous at-sea deterrent”. My SNP colleagues and I have been quite consistent on the ring-fenced MOD budget as it stands: every penny spent on Trident is a penny less spent on conventional forces. Hon. Members need not take just my word for it; at the end of October, an article in The Times by defence editor Deborah Haynes stated that the armed forces would have to find £300 million of savings this year because of cost overruns in the Successor programme. One source quoted said:
“All that is now left to cut is capability”—
amphibiosity. That is why we are here today.
Andrew Bowie
Hon. Members have already mentioned the reaction of our allies, especially the Americans, to potential cuts in our amphibious capability. I do not think that they will be that happy about our cutting our nuclear deterrent either.