Defence Personnel

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot). It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal), who spoke in the previous debate and reminded me—this is important—that he probably arrived in the west midlands as a Ugandan Asian at the same time that I arrived there as a German. He now occupies Enoch Powell’s old seat and I have Neville Chamberlain’s old seat. That shows our extraordinary diversity and ability to assimilate and accommodate people from all parts of the world.

[Angus Robertson]

The hon. Lady is also holding a piece of paper in her hand.

[Ms Stuart]

Yes, I am holding a piece of paper—or several of them—in my hand.

Before the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire beats himself up too much about having been wrong, he should remember that we have not yet withdrawn from Afghanistan. I hope that we will both end up having to say that we have been proved wrong, but we should be anything but complacent about what happens in Afghanistan and about the ease of withdrawal. The closer we get to the withdrawal date and the more we have to ensure the safety of our own troops—we are not entirely clear who provides that security—the more difficult it will get. The situation reminds me of when children leave home: we cannot wait for them to leave home, but the closer the time gets, the more nervous we get about their having to step out.

I want to start by addressing a big issue and then move on to something more specific. I am often accused of having a typical foreigner’s emotional attachment to British institutions, which is probably true of a few people. I have always been extremely proud of a country that has a sense of itself and its role in the world, but the recent strategic defence reviews and what has been happening in other Departments have made me begin to wonder whether we still have that sense of self and of our role in the world.

I would assert that we now have a Ministry of Defence that says that we will provide the amount of troops that we can afford in order to balance the books, rather than starting off by saying, “This is the role we wish to play in the world.” I would have expected a strategic defence review to start by saying, “We have a Navy because we are an island and therefore we need x, y and z,” and, “Our air force is a certain size because we have assessed the risk from the air.” The commitment and engagement that we wish to see outside these islands should determine the size of our Army. I have seen no such clear statement as to what we are about.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I absolutely agree with and entirely endorse what the hon. Lady says about the foreign policy baseline for any strategic defence review, but does she not agree that, if we were to start from that standpoint, it would be almost inevitable that we would end up with a requirement that was vastly greater than the nation could afford?

[Ms Stuart]

That may well be the case, but we have to start with where we think we should be and then we can work out where we ought to be. It is not just the MOD that lacks that strategic sense. At one stage, the Department for International Development had a clear statutory duty of poverty reduction, but even that is being reviewed and rethought at the moment—I am not entirely sure where that takes us. Our Foreign Office is also reducing its influence. If we consider how this country projects itself to the rest of the world, we will see that there is a lack of clarity in those lead Departments that ought to provide a collective view.

I asked myself whether this was happening all over the world and looked at comparative figures for GDP spending on NATO. Even if we look back as far as the 1950s, there is a consistent pattern within the European Union. Our country and France contribute well over 2% of GDP commitment, so we clearly have a view on where we should be in terms of spending.

It is sometimes difficult to make comparisons between armed forces numbers, because we ended conscription. The Italian and German figures in particular—they sometimes include police forces—are somewhat misleading, but nevertheless the pattern shows that we are still big significant players. We have no sense, however, of why we want to be the big players. What are we going to do?

I want to leave the Minister with a final example of that muddled, confused thinking. In my experience, it is always when we are not entirely sure what we want to say that we end up constructing sentences that are utterly meaningless. The Defence Committee took evidence yesterday on the Army 2020 review and I was struck by something called, “Figure 1: Force Development Deductions”. I invite the Minister to look at the relevant paragraph. I will not bore the House by reading it. It has about 10 sentences and I am glad that the word “broadband” is in there, because that is about the only word I understood. I drew the attention of our witness, General Sir Peter Wall, to that paragraph and asked him about it, and he confessed his confusion about the precise meaning of that integral part of the report. He promised the Committee that he would consult the Babel fish and provide us with an English translation. I think that demonstrates that the MOD needs to be much clearer, particularly post-Afghanistan, of what we think our forces are for. It is no good just to say, “This is how much money we’ve got,” even though the money is important.

This might again be a sign of my emotional attachment as a foreigner, but I am always struck by the island blindness of this country. This is an island, so how can we compromise some of our surveillance abilities? What will happen to maritime security? It is staggering. That is my general point for the Minister.

My second point is much more grounded at home. Last week, I went to meet Malala Yousafzai’s father—the family are currently in my constituency at the Queen Elizabeth hospital and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, which do extraordinary work. It was particularly pleasing for me to see that good work, because I was the evil Minister who closed down the military hospitals in places such as Gosport and I remember being denounced in endless Adjournment debates for doing so.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I closed the last one.

[Ms Stuart]

But we closed them not because we wanted to, but because the royal colleges were telling us that the MOD could no longer provide the best medical services. Ten years ago, the NHS looked at the Ministry of Defence and said, “You guys really need to step up to the plate and improve your act.” Now, some of the work within defence medicine is miles ahead of what the NHS is doing in terms of rehabilitation and care. We have unexpected survival rates among soldiers, which one can see in the latest evidence from Afghanistan, that are well beyond what the NHS could do. That is a good development.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)]

To go back to the hon. Lady’s point about numbers, I declare an interest because my mother was Italian. The hon. Lady’s point about the carabinieri being included is right. In my experience, the Chief of the General Staff is a very plain-speaking gentleman. If there has been any difficulty with that particular paragraph, I am sure that she will get a very clear reply. I echo her comments with regard to the role of 3 hospital at Camp Bastion. The stunning statistic from that facility in Helmand is that however severely wounded they are, 98% of the people who go through its doors alive come out alive. That is an incredible statistic and we pay tribute to that hospital.

[Ms Stuart]

I also want to draw attention to the creation of the Fisher house on the site of the Queen Elizabeth hospital, which has 18 en-suite rooms. It will be ready next year and will have much better facilities for the families. That is another good development.

I do have concerns about the future. At the moment, our young injured heroes are young injured heroes. In 10 or 20 years’ time, they will be middle-aged, probably overweight like many of us, and will no longer have the image of a hero. Will we still look after them properly then? The military covenant mentions that point.

The paper on the military covenant, which arrived so nicely in time for this debate, refers to the establishment of

“a unified Defence Primary Healthcare Service”.

I urge the Minister to talk to colleagues in the NHS about this matter, because I am in no way convinced that the commissioning structures that are being put in place, now that primary care trusts are no longer doing the commissioning, are sufficient to ensure that the very specialist services that our veterans need are provided not just for the next year, five years or 10 years, but in the long term. It is so much easier for Americans, because registering as a veteran gives them access to free medical health care. We do not have that in this country and it is easy to forget that in years to come, they will still have very special needs.

I read through the report just before the debate and it states that we are planning to create that service, but we need to be more specific. Will it be a specialist commissioning unit? Will there be national commissioning? If so, how will it work throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, given that health is a devolved issue? This is going to be key in the long term to veterans trusting what we provide through the military covenant.

This is a very useful debate. The key thing that I urge the Minister to go away with is that we need to have a much clearer sense of purpose and of what we want our armed forces to do. We must not just look at them when they have been injured or have given their life, as important as that is; I want them to be honoured, celebrated and recognised for the job that they want to do, and that is the job of fighting. We as a country need to have a sense of when we think something is worth fighting for. That needs to be spelt out at some stage or another by the Government.