Strategic Defence and Security Review

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

Every time there was a defence debate in this House in the two or three years before the election, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members repeatedly quizzed Ministers about the apparent gap between the promises they were making, the plans they were laying down and the funds that they appeared to have at their disposal in order to fulfil them. Time and again, they stood there pretending that it all added up, and the fact of the matter is that it did not.

The right hon. Gentleman refers to the Gray report. That very telling report specifically identified the true situation on the procurement side. However, that was only half the story, because the black hole existed not only in the procurement budget but across the whole defence budget, and that is the scale of the challenge that now faces us.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Although I have great respect for the shadow Secretary of State and the work that he did in the Department, I think that my hon. Friend is equally entitled to ask him when he ever admitted to the scale of the crisis that his Department was facing—although he did have the honesty to come to the House and admit that he had started the process of raiding future capability in order to sustain current operations, which showed that our commitments had got wildly ahead of the resources that the Government had made available.

[Nick Harvey]

My hon. Friend is quite right. That was precisely the significance of the measures that the right hon. Gentleman had to take hastily—last December, I think—in order to make this year’s budget wash its face. That is a graphic illustration of the problem that had been allowed to grow up and which we are now having to tackle.

Of course, we could tackle this simply by cutting a bit off everything—the equal-pain option across the services—but that would not distinguish capabilities or assess real risk, and it would not reform our forces for the strategic challenges ahead. We cannot just fossilise what we currently do, and again fail the strategic test. Instead, we must look ahead to the end of this 10-year period and decide what we want our armed forces to look like at that time based on the foreign policy goals we have set, our assessment of the future character of conflict, and our anticipation of the changes in technology that we will need to incorporate.

The National Security Council has agreed that the overarching strategic posture should be to address the most immediate threats to our national security while maintaining the ability to identify and deal with emerging ones before they become bigger threats to the UK. This flexible, adaptable posture will maintain the ability to safeguard international peace and security, to deter and contain those who threaten the UK and its interests, and, where necessary, to conduct a number of different operations concurrently. It will also, crucially, keep our options open for a future in which we can expect our highest priorities to change over a period of time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr MacShane]

I was not, but I am nervous of service patriotism. I understand it, but I wonder whether the RAF should also have military regiments, whether the Army should also have an Army air force and whether there is not some rationalisation that could be applied.

On the question of the nuclear deterrent, I entirely agree with the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and others. If Britain substantially reduces its nuclear deterrent capability, others may be tempted to step into the breach. We are lucky that in one of the richest regions of the world only two mature democracies —France and Britain—have a nuclear capability. If either of us were to let go or significantly reduce our nuclear deterrent profile, what other major European power might be tempted to feel that it might need one?

[Mr Jenkin]

Poland.

[Mr MacShane]

From a sedentary position, the hon. Gentleman makes a crack about Poland. [Interruption.] I have a lot of Polish background and I would not suggest that it is very helpful vis-à-vis Russia to talk up any question of Poland’s becoming a nuclear power. It is far better that we are one and that the French remain one.

[Mr Jenkin]

Exactly.

[Mr MacShane]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me.

We have the new rising powers in the world that do not respect the rules of democracy, whereas at the same time the democratic world is leaderless. President Obama, whom I like and admire—he is in my political family—is not a strategic world leader. There is no European leader who is a strategic world leader. The Chinese know what they want, the Russians know what they want, and Iran and North Korea know what they want. Many of the so-called Islamic republics know what they want. However, do we know what we want?

That is why the debate is important—not just in terms of my constituency interests, or firing ranges in the Western Isles or the absolutely correct need to talk with trade unions and others in the industry, or to help our wounded soldiers when they come back, for which the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) so eloquently appealed. It is about a bigger strategic set of choices. We have to lift our horizons and think about the new threats not just to our country but to the wider set of values of ourselves and our allies. I hope that the Government—I wish them well—can rise to that challenge. If they cannot, the House must make them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) for the passion and sincerity that he regularly brings to our debates about defence and his excellent suggestion to reduce costs by depending more on reserves. It is obvious, as I shall say in a moment, that we cut equipment or cut manpower. That is it. If we cut equipment, we reduce future capability; if we cut manpower intelligently—I am afraid that the civil service cuts must come before armed forces cuts, and substantial cuts in the civil service must be made—it can be rebuilt much more quickly. We can maintain reserves of manpower, but we cannot retain reserves of equipment that we have not built. I commend his suggestion to the House.

The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) mentioned strategy. Let me say first that the Defence Committee has alerted us to the startlingly compressed timetable for the review. We know that there is only one reason for that. It is to fit into the spending round. There is no doubt that we are in danger of having an FDSR instead of an SDSR—a financial defence and security review rather than a strategic defence and security review.

[Mr MacShane]

On whether we cut expenditure on manpower or equipment, does the hon. Gentleman feel any of my concern that a great deal of DFID money goes to countries with massive military expenditure that represents a disproportionate level of their national income? I wonder whether we should look a little more closely at whether DFID money should go to prop up the military machines in India, Pakistan and some of the African states.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his suggestion, but I am not going to be drawn into that. I want to return to his mention of strategy. I am Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, which is conducting an inquiry entitled “Who does UK grand strategy?” We have had evidence from the Foreign Secretary and this morning the Chief of the Defence Staff gave evidence. There is a widespread feeling, expressed by the CDS himself, that we have lost the art of strategic thinking.

An article in the RUSI Journal by General Paul Newton and others states:

“The problem with the UK ‘debate’ on strategy, and defence matters more generally, is that for many observers there does not seem to be one.”

I am afraid that that is the vulnerability of this defence review—that it is being conducted in the absence of a coherent strategy. As the CDS said, we have lost the “habit of strategic thought”—the kind that looks 20 years ahead and asks what sort of country we want to be. The decisions that are made in the SDSR will define what sort of country we are in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time. It seems as though we are following Sir Humphrey’s adage about producing Government documents: “Always get rid of the difficult bit in the title—it does less harm than in the text.” Thus strategy is referred to in the title, and not to be dealt with in the substance of the text.

Yes, deficit reduction is the main effort of Government under the present circumstances; nobody in the defence world resents or disputes that. Indeed, economic security is one of the fundamental qualities of a secure state. However, the SDSR should concentrate on maintaining what I call minimum recoverable capability, so that however far we pare down current capabilities, they are recoverable in the event of an emergency. It is a risky business in this world. In the 1930s, we planned for a three-year warning for going to war, yet three years was hardly enough. As was pointed out in evidence to our Committee, it was the fighters—the Hurricanes and the Spitfires—coming into service at just the critical moment that saved this country from annihilation.

That is the kind of risk analysis that has to be made in this defence review. If the debate is about what capability we are employing and what capability we do not need because we never use it, that misses the point. Defence is about preparing for what we do not expect or anticipate. It is about being ready to use capabilities that we hope never to use, the strategic deterrent being a case in point. The danger of the SDSR is that it is being cost-driven—that it will permanently relegate this country from the first division of global powers, and that we are losing capabilities that once lost will never be recovered. We nearly did that in 1982. Paradoxically, it was the invasion of the Falklands that saved us and completely changed the situation. In fact, it brought back into being the whole concept of expeditionary warfare, which was a very alien concept in cold war terms.

The CDS referred to the financial envelope that the Ministry of Defence has been given. That sends shivers down my spine. The Treasury cannot be allowed to define £500 million spent on defence in terms exactly equivalent to £500 million spent on quangos and bureaucracy. The saving of £500 million on defence will cost far more strategically to this country than that of £500 million on quangos and bureaucracy. That qualitative judgment must be understood.

We have talked about Trident, although perhaps, for the sake of brevity, today is not the time to have that debate. If we delay Trident, we are not only doing something extraordinary that the Treasury has decried and despaired about so often in relation to defence, but putting off a programme that will cost more. If we are trying to get the deficit down over a 20-year period, then adding to costs in five years’ time will not reduce the deficit. It is like the pension problem whereby we store up future liabilities instead of facing up to them today. It is better to spend the money today than store up a bigger liability later on. We also run the risk of reopening the debate and creating an atmosphere in which cancellation becomes an option, and eventually an inevitability because of the cost increase.

If we are going to have a deterrent, then it is not about firing those weapons but about being ready and evidently prepared and determined to do so if necessary. It is about resolve, intent and sending signals to the wider world about what sort of country we are and how determined we are to defend our interests and our allies. If we falter on the upgrade of Trident, we will falter on the intention and resolve to defend our country, our wider interests and our allies. That is why we should not go down that road.

The alternative that we face in the defence review is Trident crowding out everything else, because there would be a bulge in expenditure on the procurement budget between 2015 and 2024. We would lose the aircraft carriers, the fast jets, the joint strike fighter, the transport aircrafts or the tanks, and they all have to be included in the mix. The problem is that the relationship between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence has become dysfunctional. The MOD is evidently the most dysfunctional Department in Whitehall and became so under the previous Government. If I were in the Treasury, I would be exasperated at the constant moving of the goalposts, the additional costs, the cost over-runs and the incompetence that we have seen and that the Gray report exposed.

The Prime Minister will have to intervene in that dispute between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, to safeguard vital defence capability, despite the MOD’s incompetence, and give it a chance to sort matters out. Otherwise, we will finish up abandoning vital capacity, and non-economic strategic considerations will simply be ignored.

Perhaps the real SDSR will start after the spending review, because this SDSR has such a short time scale. The real strategic thinking—the installation of capacity for strategic thinking throughout Whitehall—has to start after this SDSR, and then we have to rebuild on the foundations that are left after the spending round. But what this spending round must not do is permanently relegate this country to the second division.

[Several hon. Members]

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