Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I think yelling at each other is really not a good look. I think the Secretary of State has come to the end of his answer.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

May I bring a bit of peace to the Chamber by suggesting that what we all need is some stability in the Ministry of Defence? I think this is the sixth Secretary of State since 2010. I come from an Army background—my father and two brothers served in the British Army—and I represent Huddersfield, where David Brown and other major defence manufacturers are located, but it seems we want it all. We want the modern technology—I have always believed that we need an independent nuclear force —but, as I have consistently said to the Secretary of State’s predecessors since 2010, despite all the other things we want, at the end of the day, the Russians and the Chinese will look at us going down to 72,000 men and women in our armed services and think we have run up the white flag. What does he have to say about that?

[Mr Wallace]

First of all, the Russians will look at the fact that we have learned the lessons of Crimea and elsewhere and will be investing in deep fires, which were a place where we were deeply vulnerable. They have not been upgraded, which has allowed the Russians a strategic edge. They will look at the fact that we are starting to invest in ballistic missile defence capabilities and anti-missile capabilities, which we have been missing for many, many years, which is why our adversaries went there. They will look at the fact that we will invest in a multi-role surveillance vessel to protect our critical infrastructure, because the Russians worked out that we had not invested in that protection. They will see that we have seen what they are up to and we are going to do something about it. They will also see that the area where they seem to have got away with the most—the sub-threshold or grey zone, where they have inflicted cyber operations, corruption and all sorts of espionage on this country and her allies, and our citizens—is where we, too, are going to be, to compete back against them.