Strategic Defence and Security Review

Ben Gummer Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

In June, when the SDSR was announced, I welcomed the fact that that was going to happen, following through on the work begun by the last Labour Government and by Bernard Gray, who delivered a report with entirely sensible and incredibly well thought through proposals that needed to be acted on to improve the efficiency and delivery of goods and services to and by the MOD. However, the CSR-SDSR time pressure being placed on industry, the MOD and other defence-related organisations is causing increasing uncertainty and real concern. That concern has been evidenced both here at Westminster and across the UK in areas that either depend on the viability of the defence industrial base or have service personnel stationed at them.

The Defence Committee, on which I sit, is forthright in its comments in its first report about the way and the speed in which the SDSR process is being undertaken—the case that was so well made by the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot). I think that everybody in this House appreciated the frankness with which he delivered his comments.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not concede that there were some strong suggestions when the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) became Prime Minister that there would be a new defence review and a defence White Paper, neither of which was delivered even up until the point of the election, and that that is why we are having to undertake this review so quickly?

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman needs perhaps to get some of his facts in order. The last Labour Government’s position and how we took forward the need for a review were set out very clearly by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) earlier today. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not in the House to hear his comments.

The Committee acknowledges that there is a need for this review and for regular reviews in the future. We have been touching on the future needs of the UK and considering the future potential threats, as well as how they fit in with foreign policy, and I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) described some of the issues from a pan-European perspective in an interesting and thoughtful way. The Committee came to the view, which I share, that there is huge potential for mistakes to be made and that those mistakes could be irreversible.

In their recent evidence to the Committee, businesses added their voice to the debate. They felt that the process was moving too fast and that there had been little and in some cases no contact between senior defence industrialists and some Government Departments, including the Treasury, which I find astonishing. However, that tallies with the comments made by the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire about a cacophony of anxieties. That was clearly evident from the comments that were made to us.

Indeed, when my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) asked whether there was a risk that the cuts could affect the industries’ capacity to continue to deliver and therefore put the defence of the realm at risk, the answer came back as a clear yes from Ian King, chief executive of BAE Systems. He went on to say that for

“some of the capabilities in the programmes, you are at that critical point where if you cut back on them you will not be able to reconstitute the capability, and it will be lost to the UK. That will have an impact on the economy, because of the high-end skills that we have in the sector. Also, if you think of defence exports, an area in which the UK, I think, punches way above its weight, you will not be able to sustain that going forward.”

From my constituency’s perspective, those words cast a long shadow, and I make no excuse for being incredibly parochial. We have in our dockyard one of the most highly skilled and efficient work forces in the country—a company that is growing and adding value to the UK economy through its exports and to the local economy through the well-paid jobs it provides and the way in which they bring spending power into Plymouth and the sub-region. Babcock signed up to the terms of business agreement that the last Government set in place, which gives real value for money and provides significant efficiencies. It would be extremely difficult for the Government to get out of that agreement without significant cost.

The terms of business agreement reinforced the announcement in the maritime change programme that was made under Labour and my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) that Plymouth would continue to be a centre of excellence, particularly for deep maintenance work, and I trust that there is no intention to change that position. Our dockyard and naval base, to which I shall return, support about 7,000 jobs directly and about the same number again externally, including small and medium-sized businesses in the supply chain. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) flagged up the supply chain in relation to the Astute submarine. I have here a map that shows clearly at least 100 main contractors for the carriers, 13 of which are in the south-west. Each of those 13 contractors has a multitude of smaller companies feeding into it, supporting UK defence.

We need those jobs. A recent BBC-Experian survey flagged up just how vulnerable Plymouth would be without them. We are 309th out of 324 local authority areas in terms of our dependence on public sector—including MOD—investment and jobs. If we were the subject of significant job losses, we would be disproportionately hard hit. Because of our peripherality, we are not in a position, without significant Government investment in transport and digital links, to attract large private sector companies of the type that the Business Secretary and the Chancellor seem to think will fill the gaps left by the removal of any public sector involvement. We know that that investment is not going to happen.

The city of Plymouth has an exciting growth agenda, but that could be scuppered if the wrong decisions are made in the defence review. The cost to the Treasury of the loss of fiscal income and increased benefit payments for unemployment and housing, as well as the loss of spending power and therefore of income because of the VAT increase, would be significant. If Plymouth does not thrive, the whole sub-region will suffer. The planned local economic partnership proposed by the Conservatives could struggle without a hub such as Plymouth that is really thriving. What has the Business Secretary got to say about this in relation to the SDSR? He really should have a view, as should the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and for Communities and Local Government, not least because Plymouth city council will be left to pick up the pieces as it had to when cuts were made to the defence industry under the previous Conservative Government. We know from bitter experience that it takes decades to recover from such a position and that that places a huge burden on the local authority. Perhaps that is why the Conservative leader of Plymouth council has added her voice to the campaign that is being taken to her party’s Ministers to ensure that the SDSR does not damage Plymouth’s economy.

Plymouth has the largest naval base in western Europe and has the capacity cost-effectively to take more work and more vessels. There is a very strong economic argument for making better use of our flexible facilities. We need to support the skills base by bringing more ships alongside, perhaps moving them from Portsmouth. The hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) gave an extremely robust defence of the two carriers, and I utterly support that position. We could align the regular day-to-day maintenance with the deep maintenance.

Let me draw hon. Members’ attention to an incredibly robust article in Warships International Fleet Review by Francis Beaufort, entitled, “Will ‘coalition of idiots’ shut Devonport, give the marines to the army and send ASW”—anti-submarine warfare—“‘on holiday’?” In the article, he comments

“None of Portsmouth’s fleet support facilities compare with Devonport’s. The latter can refit nuclear-powered submarines, handle deep work on surface warships…as well as offering a world class Operational Sea Training centre for the Royal Navy,”

and so it goes on. The article also touches on flag officer sea training from Plymouth, which brings in a healthy income and can operate only in Plymouth because we have fast access to deep water. That is not the case anywhere else in the UK and certainly not in Portsmouth, where ships would have to negotiate busy shipping lanes. The Thursday wars that are operated so easily in and out of Plymouth simply could not be done anywhere else. So, I hope that that is not being considered as something to be moved.

The Navy needs to retain its amphibious strength. Significant investment has gone into, and is going into, Plymouth to support the Royal Marines, who are due to move there from Poole shortly. That capability is crucial to the shape of the future fleet and links to the need for the two carriers. I strongly counsel against any move to mothball the three vessels and landing craft that are currently based in Plymouth.

If the Treasury and MOD can sort out their turf war, they should look at whether, given the statements of the Prime Minister and the Foreign and Defence Secretaries in the run-up to the election that we must retain three naval bases, there is scope for minimising Portsmouth in a way that enables it to capitalise, as Plymouth cannot, on the commercial interest in the site and the higher land value of the MOD asset there, while retaining a Navy presence in Portsmouth, including its headquarters.

Devonport has a long naval history, with its infrastructure, skilled personnel and natural providence. The MOD could do a lot by protecting and, indeed, expanding Plymouth, but at the very least the new Government should stick to the findings and proposals of the maritime change programme and the naval base review which underlay the Government’s guarantee of a bigger and better future for Devonport, because it simply makes sound economic sense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

If only the former United States Defence Secretary had possessed the clarity of speech that has just been demonstrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), he might have been better understood.

I, too, thank the Backbench Business Committee. Last week’s excellent debate on Afghanistan, the ripples of which are, I believe, hitting the shores of Government, showed that it can have an effect. This rather modest reform of our Parliament is clearly for the better, both improving the quality of the voice with which we represent our constituents and demonstrating that we are a revitalised House. That is important in the context of today’s debate, because it is surely our democracy that we are discussing. I refer not just to the oft-repeated fact that the first duty of any Government and Parliament is to defend the interests of our democracy, the people who put us here, our political institutions and our allies, but to democracy as a wider entity. It is worth pointing out, even if we were to wish it otherwise, that we are still the second largest contributor to the effort globally, and while our contribution may be considerably less than that of the United States in Afghanistan, it is still more than 10 times that of Germany and France, welcome though their contribution is.

I was going to present a short critique of the actions of the last Government, but owing to your injunctions, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall cut that out. In any event, I think that, given that only one Labour Back Bencher is present, it would be grossly unfair to vent my spleen on him. The one person whom I would exempt from criticism is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench. It was plain to many people—those of us who were not in the House at the time could observe it on television from an amateur perspective—that the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) was one of the few people who wrestled with the very difficult circumstances in which he found himself, if I may put it in that way, in the interests of our forces and our servicemen.

What I will say is that, like much of the promise of the last Labour Government, this promise started out very well indeed. The 1998 strategic defence review and the 2005 defence industrial strategy were both extremely fine documents. They were not only coherent and well thought out, but founded on the firm basis of a sense of foreign policy direction and wider British interests. They were also surprisingly prescient. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware of the following phrase in the 1998 strategic defence review. It states that while the review’s authors understand that we have to address wider strategic interests, it is also important that there is an understanding that

“smaller but frequent, often simultaneous and sometimes prolonged operations can be more difficult than preparing for a single worst-case conflict.”

If the foresight of Lord Robertson at that time had been fulfilled by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), we might be having a different discussion here today. I believe that future historians, whom the right hon. Gentleman often prays in aid when he is assailed by the judgments of the current generation, will surely judge his failure to articulate a sensible and clear policy on Iraq and Afghanistan—and his predecessor’s, too—and his complete failure to fund appropriately our forces in theatre to be a case of terrible neglect.

The right hon. Gentleman and his predecessor did precious little to advance the cause of, and case for, peace in the middle east, despite all the assurances we were given at the inception of the Iraq war. Effectively, that failure charges a levy on our intelligence, security and defence budgets for every single year that we fail to find a solution. That is the framework within which the current SDSR must be undertaken.

A cautionary tale must also be heeded. It is to be hoped that any differences that might exist between the Treasury and the MOD—I am sure there is complete amity between them!—are settled, and settled for the next 10 years, as is my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s intention. The division between those two Departments has been alluded to frequently in the debate, and it causes a structural problem in our defence capability that has manifested itself very clearly in previous years.

I am also pleased that in the formulation of the context of this SDSR there seem to be signs that the Gordian knot that lies at the heart of any defence review is being grasped, in that while my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State states what I hope is the obvious point that we should keep our options open for a future in which we expect our highest priorities to change over time, there is also a recognition that the UK cannot ensure against every imaginable risk and that therefore the Government must decide which risks they are prepared to take. These two statements go to the nub of what we must address in the SDSR. It offers a good and appropriate opportunity to think very clearly about what threats we will face in the distant future, rather than just next year, the year after that and in five years’ time, which are much more apparent. I hope it is not too provocative a statement to say that we need to take far greater risks with short-term threats that are unlikely to materialise in order to protect ourselves against longer term risks of which we are far less sure.

Let me quickly mention a few key issues that I do not think have been mentioned so far: the competition for water resources; the continued reliance, at least over the next 40 or 50 years, on liquid hydrocarbons; and the shift in global economic power to China and India. All of those issues suggest that we need to be looking to have a stronger maritime force, which requires investment decisions now, not in five, 10 or 15 years’ time.

Let me also briefly address the question of how we pay for that. It seems ludicrous that we are preserving a deep strike force against an enemy that is unlikely to exist in the very near future—for instance, battle tanks that within their lifetime are unlikely to face an enemy that will come over the European plain. I also echo the points about reservists; their greater use seems to be an obvious way to bring down costs and maintain capability.

I also hope the Secretary of State will take on board very clearly the message about Afghanistan that came out of the previous Backbench Business Committee debate. In respect of that country, comments have been made about the 13th century. With the passing knowledge of mediaeval history that I have—and I know one other Member in the Chamber also has—I can say that I think many people in the 13th century would have taken some offence had they heard that comment.

The fact is that we cannot generate five centuries or fifteen centuries of development in civil society in five years. We must think very carefully about why we are in Afghanistan. Once that question is answered, the savings might be put towards the serious threats that we will face not in five years’ time, but in 20 years’ time.