Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Ben Wallace and Bob Ainsworth

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

May I just say a word on the process? I know that the Backbench Business Committee debates are a new procedure, but we need to settle into having some predictability and consistency in their organisation. Last week, there were no wind-ups, but this week there are to be some. Last week, we spoke after the Minister, but this week we are to speak before the Minister. Hon. Members need to know where they stand. I understand that this arrangement is new and I understand, therefore, why some of these issues are arising, but we need those things to be sorted out.

The strategic defence and security review will define our armed forces for the foreseeable future, and the Government will have to take fundamental decisions about their shape, size and capabilities. The report published this week by the Select Committee on Defence raised serious concerns about the speed of, and the consultation process adopted by, the review. Many of those conclusions did not come as a surprise to me, and I agree wholeheartedly with much of what the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) said and what is contained in his report. It has been clear for a while now that the Chancellor is firmly in the driving seat, carrying out this review at breakneck speed and potentially sacrificing our long-term strategic priorities to the need to cut costs. That is an incredibly short-sighted approach, for which the country will pay a heavy price, and somebody needs to put the brakes on. Perhaps it will be the Minister. Before the election, he said:

“We know that whoever wins the election, the Treasury will make life difficult for the Ministry of Defence, especially in the light of the public deficit. All of us in the defence community within the political sphere will have to kick up rough to help to keep the Treasury at bay.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2010; Vol. 507, c. 643.]

He is now Minister for the Armed Forces and if he does not know how to kick up rough, he has a fair few people at his disposal who have the first-class ability to do so. He seems to need a few lessons in self-defence, and he has people at his disposal who can teach him if he does not know how.

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making his point. Does he not recognise that we would not be having this discussion about a rushed strategic defence review if his Government of the past 13 years had had timely and thorough defence reviews throughout that period?

[Mr Ainsworth]

I would not have given way to the hon. Gentleman if I had known that his intervention was going to be a boring repetition of things that are said repeatedly. I will come to the substantive point that the Chair of the Defence Committee raises in a while. I do not underestimate the difficulties that the Government face and the hard choices that need to be made, but they are not going about this in the way that will capture the support of the country, of the armed forces and of Parliament as a whole, and that will enable them to do as good a job as they can in the circumstances. If Government Members were to stop and reflect on that, they would know that what I am saying is true.

The Government will need to address the failure to consult the public and the broader defence community, as identified by the Defence Committee’s report. The failure to consult industry properly will have a serious impact on the ability to supply equipment to our armed forces. The Government appear to have stopped their work on acquisition reform, and will publish their industry and technology policy only next year. They cannot treat procurement and industrial capability as an afterthought; it must be an integral part of the strategic defence and security review.

The Defence Secretary has undergone a remarkable transformation since being in government. He has gone from being Oliver asking for more to being the Artful Dodger, ducking responsibility for his decisions. As entertaining as that spectacle has been, I would prefer to have a Government who acted like a Government. Before the election, the Conservatives called for an extra three battalions for the Army and more helicopters—how many times did they demand more helicopters? They also called for more vehicles and more ships. They now claim that they did not know what the financial position was, but that simply does not stand up.

I say to the Chair of the Defence Committee that we all knew that there were pressures on the defence budget. That is why we commissioned the Gray report and why I took the tough decisions I did last December. I decided not only to prioritise equipment for Afghanistan, but to reduce, ahead of the strategic defence review and to the degree that could be done outside an SDR, the pressures on the defence budget. What was the response of Conservative Members? They howled their disapproval at the cuts that were being made. They knew the situation, they knew the general financial framework of the world markets and what that had done to the British economy, and they knew that there was overheating within the defence budget, yet they continued to howl for more. As a result of what they said and did in the run-up to the election, there is not a member of the armed forces—not one—who would have believed that a Tory Government would not have brought extra funding. The Conservatives told people that efficiency savings would be all that was needed to deal with the budget.

Now the tune has changed but the methods are really quite worrying. Every week in the Sunday papers—rapidly, it is becoming each day—we are treated to more and more briefings dripping out of Whitehall. Will the carriers go? Will the Royal Marines be brought under Army command? What is the future of the joint strike fighter? What about the Tornado? It is government by leak and spin despite all the noble talk.

Nobody is laying out the options. Nobody is explaining the dilemmas to the country, to industry or to the armed forces. Nobody is pulling together and presenting a coherent plan. That is not the way to conduct a strategic defence and security review.