Trident Renewal

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

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

What evidence is there that if we got rid of our nuclear weapons, anybody else would get rid of theirs? Would the French give up their nuclear weapons? Would the Russians?

[Angus Robertson]

If common sense were to prevail, it would have a positive impact on other countries. In the first instance, we have to be responsible for the decisions we make in this country, but I remember that when President Nelson Mandela announced he was changing the South African Government’s position on nuclear weapons, he was lauded for it by Members on both sides of the House. I think the UK would be lauded for making a similar decision.

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[Michael Fallon]

I do not recognise the £100 billion figure, and it is not possible to answer that question until the maingate decision is made which will be put before this House next year.

Let me turn directly to the issue that the hon. Member for Moray quite rightly and fairly put to me—the issue of affordability.

[Mr Jenkin]

If we are going to talk about through-life costs, is it not important to point out that the amortised costs of our nuclear deterrent will be only some 6% of the overall defence budget or 0.3% of gross domestic product? The idea that cancellation of this programme will pay for all the goodies outlined by the Scottish National party—one presumes that the SNP will want to carry on building different types of submarine at the these yards in any case—is just moonshine.

[Michael Fallon]

My hon. Friend who, having served as shadow Defence Secretary, knows a great deal about this issue, is absolutely right. These are replacement submarines that are going to last us until 2060, so it is very important to look at the cost of the project over the next 45 years.

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[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman does not make a coherent case. Chemical weapons have certainly been used in recent times—we do not know whether biological weapons have been used—which means that nuclear weapons did not act as a deterrent, so his argument is not sound.

[Mr Jenkin]

The right hon. Lady makes a necessary contribution to this debate and she asks a very interesting question about the banning of other unacceptable weapons systems while we continue to possess nuclear weapons. But is it not the case that nuclear weapons represent, in the psychology of our global civilisation, an unacceptable threshold of use? Therefore, they have a deterrent effect because the release of one weapon could release many. I ask her this question: why, since the end of the second world war when nuclear weapons were first deployed, did war between the great powers end? Why was that the last world war? Could the possession of nuclear weapons have something to do with it?

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman does not know his history. There have been hundreds of wars since that time and hundreds of thousands of people have died. Many of the wars were proxy wars between the superpowers, so his argument is completely invalid. If he argues that deterrence is so wonderful because the weapons are never used, then he has to ask: why have them at all? Let us get rid of them rather than posture and spend vast fortunes and create a situation in which, at the very least, accidents and misjudgments could happen. The point about luck is that eventually it runs out, and that could happen.

It is instructive to inquire how other countries and institutions view the nuclear weapon states. I had an opportunity to find that out last December when I attended a conference organised by the Austrian Government on the humanitarian effects of the use of nuclear weapons, to which the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) has already referred. Building on two previous meetings hosted by Norway and Mexico, this conference was attended by representatives of no fewer than 157 Governments. Most telling were the contributions of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, the bodies on which the whole world depends, regardless of politics, in cases of natural disaster. Let me quote from their statement:

“Even though only a few states currently possess nuclear weapons, they are a concern to all states…They can only bring us to a catastrophic and irreversible scenario that no one wishes and to which no one can respond in any meaningful way.”

Their statement continues:

“All other weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical and biological weapons, have been banned. Nuclear weapons—which have far worse consequences than those weapons—must now be specifically prohibited and eliminated as a matter of urgency.”

I do not think that there is anyone who could not respect a statement from the Red Cross and the Red Crescent.

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[Mr Godsiff]

I am coming on to that. Let me deal with, in my opinion, myth No. 1. The UK has four nuclear submarines. Each can carry up to eight missiles, and each missile can carry up to five nuclear warheads. That is 40 nuclear weapons of the 17,000 that the Minister said are in existence. The UK does not own the missiles on its submarines. It leases Trident II D5 missiles from the United States, where they are made, maintained and tested. Our four submarines have to go to the American naval base in Georgia to have those missiles fitted. If Members like to believe that somehow that means that we are an independent nuclear power, so be it, but I would say that we are totally dependent on America. I do not oppose our being dependent in defence on America; I am a strong supporter of the Atlantic alliance, but I am not a supporter of mythology.

[Mr Jenkin]

If the United States withdrew co-operation for the maintenance of our nuclear deterrent, the fact is that the capabilities with which they provide us have a long lead time, so we would have time to develop our own indigenous capacity to provide those capabilities. There is no point in our doing so while the US is happy to share the costs with us and help us to provide a cheaper, better-value nuclear deterrent.

[Mr Godsiff]

I take note of what the hon. Gentleman has said, but we are where we are. We acquired these weapons from the USA.

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[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jenkin]

rose—

[Mr Godsiff]

May I make some progress, as I have been generous in giving way?

The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) said that it is absolutely vital that we maintain our nuclear capability because otherwise our position as a member of the United Nations Security Council could be endangered. When the UN was set up in 1947 or 1948 there was only one nuclear power, and that was America. The other five countries that ended up on the Security Council were not nuclear countries; they were the victors of the second world war. If, as he suggests, a country has to have a nuclear capability in order to become a member of the Security Council, that does not say much for our championing, quite rightly, the aspirations of Japan, as a non-nuclear power, to become a member, or Germany’s desire to become a member. If that were a criterion, the two obvious applicants would be Israel and North Korea.

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[Sir Nick Harvey]

I will come on to talk about the implications and the consequences of using nuclear weapons, but—although the hon. Gentleman is right to say that the security situation in and around Ukraine deteriorated rapidly—I do not accept for one moment that anything that has happened there makes the prospect of nuclear conflict between ourselves and Russia any more likely than it was before all that started.

[Mr Jenkin]

I remind the hon. Gentleman of the following words:

“I admit to some miscalculations about Russia. I did not calculate how the collective mood of Russia was so ready to respond to a dominant and ruthless leadership…Nor did I expect that the perestroika and glasnost that we welcomed so enthusiastically in this country and elsewhere would become so despised at home in Russia.”—[Official Report, 18 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 670.]

Those were the words of his colleague, the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). Why is the hon. Gentleman so confident that he can predict the future when the right hon. and learned Gentleman has admitted that he was wrong?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I am making absolutely no attempt to predict the future; I am talking about the threat that I believe we face now at this point in time. For another nation sate to be taken seriously as a nuclear adversary, it needs a combination of capability and intent. Although it is certainly the case that the Russians and many others have the capability to strike us with a nuclear weapon, I do not believe for one moment that they have the intent to do so. If things should deteriorate in the future, that is a different position, but I do not believe that we face such a threat.

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[Dr Lewis]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman has understood the three obligations I have listed. The first is to work for the cessation of the nuclear arms race—we are not a part of the nuclear arms race—at an early date. The second is to achieve world nuclear disarmament, and the third is to achieve general and complete conventional disarmament. I believe that those are, frankly, utopian visions that we work towards but which suffer setbacks according to the state of the world at any time, and the state of the world at the moment is one of grave disturbance and serious potential threats.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am sorry that I missed the earlier part of my hon. Friend’s speech. Surely the point is that there is no obligation at all to disarm unilaterally in any shape or form, yet that seems to be the policy favoured by the supporters of this motion.

[Dr Lewis]

I entirely agree.

I must bring my remarks to a close for the sake of other Members, but I would simply say that, although much has been said about the cost of the deterrent, so far as I know our deterrent has never amounted to more than 10% of the overall defence budget. Arguments about the deterrent must be made on the basis either that people believe it is necessary to have one to prevent this country from facing nuclear blackmail, or they do not. If people believe that a deterrent is necessary for such a role, 10%, 20% or even 30% of the defence budget is not too much to pay. Fortunately, we will not have to pay anything like that sum. It is comparable with the cost of the High Speed 2 rail system that we propose to build. In my opinion, our priorities should lie in a slightly different direction, given the cuts that defence has taken.

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

In following the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), it is worth reflecting on how important it is to have these debates. We do not necessarily hear anything new and startling emerge in the arguments put forward, but it is important that the British public—our voters—see that we are having this discussion. If there was one shortcoming in the decision taken at the end of Tony Blair’s reign, it was that it was felt to have been taken in an unseemly rush. It is absolutely right that we should continue to debate this matter until the maingate decision is taken.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr remarked that the main decision is going to be taken after the next election. To that extent, this debate is rather otiose. It is not a turning-point debate; it is about political positioning. To some extent, it is rather laughable. I would not usually pick holes in a motion, but this one says that this House believes that Trident should not be renewed. We know what the Scottish and Welsh nationalists mean by the motion, but we are not renewing Trident; we are renewing the submarines. We are not renewing the missiles or the warheads, but simply renewing the submarines. For the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), currently sitting in the place of the SNP leader, to say that a vote against this motion is a vote for “stockpiling” nuclear weapons really is an exaggeration. That does not excuse itself from the mouth of a unilateralist.

There are many points to pick up from the debate. The cost needs to be put in context. The extra cost that has occasioned this debate is a mere—I say a mere—£261 million. That is a tiny, minute part of the defence budget. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, it is merely a pull forward of what will be spent later, and spending it now probably saves money in the long term. Even if one accepted this £100 billion lifetime cost of Trident over, say, 50 years, that would be less than our net contribution to the European Union in each of those years. It would be less than many other costs that we sign away without a breath. I will never forget the day we underwrote all the banks with hundreds of billions of pounds of capital in an extraordinarily under-populated and uncontroversial debate. This is a relatively small decision—less than HS2, as was pointed out.

The right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock), who used to represent CND and apparently still does, asked why we should waste this money on weapons that we never use. This is another misconception. These weapons are in use every day. They are deployed and they are ready to fire at a few moments’ notice. They are not targeted on any particular country or city, but they are ready to be deployed in anger on any day of any year at any hour. I echo the Secretary of State’s tribute to the Trident submarine crews and their families and all those who support their operation. It is an immense achievement that we maintain a continuous at-sea deterrent.

The presence of this capability at our disposal in the oceans helps to shape the global security environment. It is not just to keep us safe; it is to keep the world safe. It is to keep all those non-nuclear members of NATO under an umbrella. It is to engage the United States in what happens in Europe. If we gave up our nuclear weapons and France gave up its, which I presume is what is advocated by proponents of the motion, why would the United States be bothered to defend us when we cannot be bothered to defend ourselves? That is what the US would think; in fact, it is what the US already thinks in respect of conventional capability. If we were to take our piece off the board, it would be the final nail in the obligation of the US to defend us in extremis. It is the same question as whether we would pull the trigger to defend a non-NATO country without any nuclear capability, should Russia become aggressive with that country.

[Mr MacNeil]

What is the difference between the hon. Gentleman’s policy and attitude towards this issue and the policy and attitude of people in America who feel that they need to have handguns to protect themselves “for security”?

[Mr Jenkin]

I do not think there is a parallel. The people who own handguns as individuals are not accountable for their behaviour. We have a licensing system in this country that is vigorous, makes people much more accountable and limits the number of such guns in circulation, particularly when it comes to people who might be less accountable. I can understand the hon. Gentleman’s rather trivial point, but it is a rhetorical debating point, so I am not going to spend much time on it.

There is another question that we keep hearing: “Is this really an independent deterrent?” I have spent plenty of time around a deterrent and around people who know about the deterrent, and if the Americans had some secret switch in some bunker in the United States that could disable our deterrent and prevent us from firing it, I think that we would know about it. That switch does not exist. The fact is that once the submarine is at sea, the command and control of the firing of the weapons system is completely autonomous. One of the factors that give us leverage over American policy is that if this country were in trouble, or if Europe were in trouble, America too would be in trouble, because the possibility of a nuclear exchange would bind it inextricably into the conflict. Europe and the United States have many mutual interests, and there are many reasons why we should support each other’s security policies, but, in extremis, we can strengthen that position by means of the capability that we possess.

Another question that we keep being asked is, “Does deterrence work?” There is evidence that it does, and those who argue that deterrence had nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war are flying in the face of that evidence. There was an arms race, and the options that were available to the Soviet Union as it sought to solve its internal problems by expanding were contained by deterrence. It lost the arms race because it could not afford to keep up with the cost of the technology that the west could afford.

[Mr MacNeil]

If deterrence worked and mutually assured destruction worked, why did Colonel Petrov not respond in the 1980s when he thought that five missiles were bound for the USSR? If what the hon. Gentleman is saying were true, the world would have been annihilated in the 1980s.

[Mr Jenkin]

We do not expect the people who man the nuclear weapons systems in responsible countries such as ours—I even include Russia in that—to act as automatons; we expect them to use their judgment, and Colonel Petrov used his judgment. I would expect anyone in a position of that kind to use his judgment. As for the idea that we are all living on a knife edge because there will be some hideous nuclear accident at any minute, there is absolutely no evidence of that. The book that was referred to by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford, speaking for CND, is full of scare stories, none of which has actually led to any disaster. That is because safety is built into the systems, and those postulated disasters are extremely unlikely to occur.

The point that I make to the hon. Gentleman is the point that I would make to the right hon. Lady. Why does he think war between great powers ended at the same time as nuclear weapons were invented? It is because war between great powers possessing nuclear weapons suddenly became unthinkable. Other wars have occurred, but they have been wars in which the participants have not had nuclear weapons. The reason we live in what is perhaps a safer world is that we live in a world with nuclear weapons. I know that the hon. Gentleman will find that very hard to accept.

[Mr MacNeil]

What has happened since the end of the second world war is that colonial wars have ended. Colonialism has gone and imperialism has gone, and that is why wars between the great powers have gone. There was a change in the mindset of many countries when colonialism went. It had nothing to do with nukes.

[Mr Jenkin]

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s assertion. There was a great competition between two great powers from 1945 until 1990, but it never resulted in an all-out conflict because both sides possessed nuclear weapons. I think that that speaks for itself.

Why must the United Kingdom be the country that carries this responsibility? That is another question that we hear. I am afraid that it is an accident of history. We must because we can, and we must because others cannot or will not. Do we want Germany to become a nuclear power instead of us? Do we want France to be the only nuclear power in Europe? Do we want Italy and Spain to become nuclear powers? No. They do not want to, and we do not want them to. It is better for us to have a limit of two nuclear powers in Europe, and to share the responsibility with the United States. That is the way in which the dice of history have fallen, but it has advantages for us. We are one of the most powerful countries in the world. We project our power and status through the possession of nuclear weapons, and we hold our position on the P5 as a nuclear weapons state. We are, even now, one of the great powers in this world, providing global security for us and our allies, and indeed for so many of the countries that might consider themselves our enemies—that is one of the ironies of the situation—and shaping the global strategic environment in all our interests, not least our own.

Let us deal with another myth: the idea that scrapping Trident would allow a spending bonanza on other public programmes or on defence. There is no evidence to suggest that the Treasury would allow the cancellation of Trident and allow the Ministry of Defence to keep that money to spend on conventional weapons. No amount of expenditure on conventional weapons that we could possibly afford would replace the stabilising and security effects of possessing the nuclear deterrent.

The one really laughable bit of this debate is the Liberal Democrats’ attempt to revive their now totally discredited “Trident Alternatives Review”. Why do we need four submarines? I hear the caveat the Labour party gingerly puts on its commitment to that, but the fourth submarine is so far in the future that it will not affect the spending plans of the next Government or the one after, so the problem is almost academic at this stage. The question is whether or not we build submarines one, two and three—I will settle for that. We have four submarines to ensure the resilience of the system towards the end of its life. If we did not have four, we would by now have suffered an interruption of the continuous at-sea deterrence. If we do not maintain that, we have a part-time deterrent, which is no deterrent; there is no point in a temporary deterrent.

Let us deal with the fantasy that we could create joint-role submarines. The Americans may have them but they have 12 submarines. For them to maintain a continuous at-sea deterrence, they can have some submarines doing completely different tasks while some of their nuclear ballistic missile submarines are carrying out the deterrent role. They have a completely different force concept from us, and it would be improper to import it. They do not understand how we can manage continuous at-sea deterrence with just four submarines and they admire the resilience of our system. We should not fiddle with it, or we will disturb its resilience.

People then ask, “Why not have a cheaper or different system?” That argument has all been disposed of, because there is no cheaper or different system of which to avail ourselves, be it submarine-launched cruise missiles, land-based missiles or air-launched weapons. We would require new submarines. There is no submarine that can carry a nuclear-tipped cruise missile. There is no nuclear cruise missile. We would have to develop a new warhead and a new missile to have nuclear-launched cruise missiles. We would need to have a new submarine because the payload of a nuclear cruise missile is so much bigger than a conventional cruise missile. We would need to develop a completely new submarine, which is what we are doing for the Trident system in any case—it is actually the cheapest system available. There is no alternative system. If we were to diversify into a completely new weapons system, it could be argued that we would be in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty because we would not be replacing like with like.

Let us deal with the concept of these different proposals, and the idea that we should abandon the continuous at-sea deterrence and keep our submarines on the Clyde until there is an emergency. Let us imagine that halfway through the Ukraine crisis we had decided to deploy our ballistic missile submarine to a continuous patrol. The cameras would have been out and the families would have known. When a submarine sails, people know about it. The submarine deploys down the Clyde on the surface, so people can take pictures of it—it is not difficult—so the world would have known that we were escalating the crisis. To make ourselves safer we have to escalate the crisis—what an absurd position to put ourselves in. Were there a real crisis at that moment of escalation, our deterrent on the surface, visible by satellite, would itself be vulnerable to attack; we would be inviting a pre-emptive attack in order to prevent us from deploying our deterrent capability.

It is strategic nonsense to move to a part-time deterrent, and the same applies in respect of submarine-launched cruise missiles. A cruise missile is a subsonic weapon, whose launch would be detected and tracked long before it arrived on target. It would be vulnerable then to interception. How many cruise missiles would we need, to be able to provide a credible deterrent? Nobody knows —nobody knows the costs of this, but they would be astronomical. In any case, it is likely that our enemy would launch a ballistic missile, which would arrive on target in our own country within minutes and long before our missile had arrived at its target. Therefore, it is not a deterrent. The same goes for land-based missiles: there is no land-based system available. Where would we put it if we were to have a land-based system? [Interruption.] Incidentally, we would need to develop our own warheads to deploy on any different weapons system, and that cost would have to be factored in.

The “Trident Alternatives Review” has been completely trashed and rubbished. The reason that the option appears to be on the table is not that the Liberal Democrats believe it is viable—I do not believe they do—but that they think it is a bargaining chip to use in the negotiations with one of the two major parties at a time of a hung Parliament if that were to emerge after the general election.

The two main parties are quite near to making it clear to the Liberal Democrats that there is simply no deal. Until that stupid policy is taken off the table, there is no conversation to be had about any future coalition with the Liberal Democrats. That is what should have happened in 2010. I am sorry that it did not, but I am very encouraged by the confidence and determination of the Labour party that continuous at-sea deterrence, will be maintained after the next election. There is a simple reason why that should happen: it is entirely probable, indeed almost certain, that there will be a clear majority in this House for continuous at-sea deterrence and the Trident submarine system—there was a majority last year and in 2007. Even if there is a party in coalition with a caveat, the majority of this House wants to maintain this system and that is the obligation. That is something that we can demonstrate for the public good, without party politics, across the Floor of the House. There is consensus and agreement on this. Sometimes we put our national interests ahead of our own party interests and we get on with the job that we are here to do, which is to govern our country and keep it safe.

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[Pete Wishart]

I heard, and I am sure my hon. Friend is aware of these reports, that these cargoes were being shipped through the city centre of Glasgow only last week. That is what we have to put up with in Scotland: these death convoys on our roads.

I am so pleased that nuclear weapons and Trident became a defining iconic feature of the independence referendum. The progressive voices of Scotland got together and ensured that this debate was promoted and taken around the halls of Scotland. I am so proud that I was on the right side of the debate. I would never side with people who believe in nuclear weapons and who continue to support the case for them.

We are not even asking the House to scrap nuclear weapons, or even to reduce their number. We are simply asking the House not to agree to £100 billion of new nuclear weapons. We use the terms multilateralist and unilateralist, but by committing ourselves to Trident renewal we are indulging in a unilateral nuclear rearmament. We are adding to the stock of nuclear weapons worldwide, and that does nothing for the ambition mentioned by those on the Labour Front Bench of ridding the world of nuclear weapons and it does nothing for achieving any multilateral aim.

We are asking the House not to agree to pursue £100 billion of spending on weapons of mass destruction that can never be used. This will be the second time in two weeks that those on the Labour Front Bench and their colleagues will walk through the Lobby with the Tories. Last week, they committed themselves to £30 billion of further austerity, agreeing with the Conservatives. Today, they will march through the Lobby with the Tories to support them on the subject of £100 billion of spending on nuclear weapons. Last week, Labour said that it was all a gimmick. They have not described our debate today as a gimmick, although I have seen some reports of that, but they are still prepared to support the Conservatives on both issues. People are rightly asking what on earth Labour is for.

We need to hear exactly what people believe will be the biggest spending issue of the next Parliament. Already, £250 million is being spent each year on what is called the assessment phase—the lead-in phase to Trident renewal. Some £1.4 million a day is being spent on preparing for this weapon of mass destruction and an estimated £1.24 billion has been spent on the project so far. That just happens to be the same amount as the Chancellor has pledged to find in new money for the NHS.

We do not know how much this project will cost. We say that it will be £100 billion, but that figure was challenged by the Conservatives. The Secretary of State refused to say how much it would cost, and when he was challenged on the figure, we got nothing from him. We do not know the Government’s estimate of the cost of all this. They talk about the maingate decision in 2016. I suggest to Ministers that they should slam that main gate closed and leave it padlocked. This country does not want Trident renewal.

How can we justify spending so much money on obscene weapons of mass destruction when food banks are a feature of every community in every constituency in Scotland? The Westminster establishment parties have rarely been held in such contempt. The Westminster elite who run those parties can barely get more than 30% support in the polls. The Westminster establishment parties are so out of kilter with what the public want and the everyday experience of people in every community it is no wonder that they are held in such low esteem and that the House is held in contempt.

The motion is signed by members of the SNP, the Green party and Plaid Cymru, which suggests that we are beginning to do something different. It is an absolute challenge to the old failure of the Westminster—Tory/Labour, Labour/Tory, austerity-voting, Trident-supporting —establishment. We offer the people of Britain the opportunity of a different way of doing things: a progressive alliance that is not prepared to accept that we just go along with £30 billion of further austerity spending and the renewal of Trident weapons.

I am pleased about that, because it means that people in England, for example, do not have to vote for a Europhobic, immigrant-loathing, quasi-racist UK Independence party. They and my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) have something substantial to support and vote for. We have already seen the results, with a Green surge. No wonder that the Labour and Tory parties want Nigel Farage, another establishment public school banker, to take part in the election debates. It does not surprise me that they will do everything that they can to keep my hon. Friend and the SNP out of those debates, although the Prime Minister has stood up, rather late, for the inclusion of the Green party.

Let us see what these weapons do, and challenge and test the assumptions of my friends, the Conservative defence hawks who enjoy nuclear weapons so much. There were unashamed in saying that Trident and weapons of mass destruction were necessary as a virility symbol, allowing us to be part of the P5—as if the British people cared the least bit about any of that. The British people care about spending on the NHS and education. They are concerned about food banks. Being able to sit with other nuclear powers to play with their toys? I do not think that that is what the British people want, and we are beginning to see that in opinion polls here.

We are told that deterrence works because of all sorts of external threats. We have heard some really dodgy stuff about the prospect of using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and including that in any discussion or debate.

[Mr Jenkin]

If France, Britain and America do not dominate the P5, who does? There is always talk about other powers joining the P5. If India, or perhaps less savoury countries, joined the P5, that would not be good for British security and the democratic world. We are there for a purpose, which is to serve the democratic world, and we do it very well.

[Pete Wishart]

That is the difference between the hon. Gentleman and me. He believes that that is important, but I could not care less about that sort of thing. I believe that it is increasingly the case that the British people could not care less about that. We are struggling—there is real need and deprivation—with Tory obscenities like the bedroom tax. Does he honestly believe that people in the constituency of the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) care whether they can sit around the table with the big boys and their weapons of mass destruction? No, I do not believe that that is the case, and the British people have begun to wake up to that.

The Government say that nuclear weapons defend us against threats. The biggest threat we face is from IS and jihadists, who would be almost delighted if we threatened them with weapons of mass destruction. They would celebrate and punch the air, because Britain would be turning it on—they would appreciate and enjoy it. This is a weapons system designed to deal with the Brezhnevs of this world, not the bin Ladens. It is a cold war response to a cold war situation, and it is ill equipped to deal with the very serious external threats that we face. North Korea is a cartoon caricature of a totalitarian state. Are we seriously suggesting that we contain these nonsensical states with nuclear weapons?

I do not even know whether we are an ally of Iran this week or an enemy, such is the state of continuing flux with all the former enemies who are now new friends. We cannot keep pace with identifying who these external threats are, but the only thing we must consistently have is nuclear weapons to threaten them. If there was ever a logic to nuclear weapons—it would be a perverted logic if so—it was the idea of mutually assured destruction during the cold war: “We could kill all you guys because you could kill all our guys.” It is utter madness to think that that is an applicable argument in this modern age with this new variety of threats.

We are going to spend £100 billion on these weapons of mass destruction that we will never use just so that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and his friends in the Conservative Government can sit at the top table. This is on top of the £30 billion of extra austerity promised to us by both the Conservative party and the Labour party. People are increasingly talking about a new alliance with the 30 per centers, as we could call them—the Conservative and Labour parties, which cannot get above that figure. That is a realistic prospect, because this will be the second time in a week that they have voted together on such issues. There is a new way of doing things in this country and a new alliance is beginning.

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[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the part-polemic by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). He was unable to answer a question put to him when he was challenged by Opposition Front Benchers about the extent to which his party, as the head of an independent Scotland, would be prepared to shelter under the American nuclear alliance. That is an important question that his party has to answer.

I say that from the perspective of someone who intends to vote with the hon. Gentleman this evening. It is right that there should be a proper debate about this, and I therefore welcome the debate that his party colleagues have introduced. We should have a cool, calm consideration of the merits of the Trident weapons system. Over the course of a decade, I have been increasingly uncomfortable about the prospect of renewing this weapons system. It is a system, and we are renewing the submarines that make up part of it. Some people have said that the motion is therefore technically in error, but without the submarines the system is pointless and without the missiles it is pointless. That is what the motion means and it is on that basis that I support it. Let me explain why.

The clinching argument for me—although I also want to refer to lots of other issues—is the opportunity cost of spending, let us say, £100 billion on renewing the weapons system over its lifetime. I am wearing the regimental tie of the Light Dragoons and want to make it clear that I spent a long time in defence, professionally and then subsequently as a special adviser in the Ministry of Defence and then in the Foreign Office. I remember trying to plan a scenario, in a political sense, for the circumstances in which the United Kingdom would decide to use nuclear weapons or weapons of similar destructive power, but, frankly, I found it impossible to find such a scenario. I think that that is still the case, and the deterrent effect of that uncertainty has been discussed.

Thirty years on from the decision taken in the 1980s to acquire the Trident system, things have changed significantly and, given the opportunity cost of acquiring the system, I believe that the decision to spend £100 billion should be altered. This weapons system is of much less practical utility than it used to be in deterrence terms and, given the cost-benefit analysis, the time has come to say that this is a business that the United Kingdom should probably get out of. As a nation, given the other potential demands on our defence budget, we can no longer justify the expense.

I listened carefully to the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin)—he made an extremely good speech—and they need to be addressed. First, if we buy this system, will it come at the expense of other parts of the defence budget? My view is that it will. My hon. Friend maintained that if the system is not bought, the Treasury will not give the Ministry of Defence the money. However, we have just made a significant political commitment to maintain defence expenditure at 2% of GDP.

[Mr Jenkin]

Have we?

[Crispin Blunt]

It was a political commitment made by the leaders of NATO at a summit hosted by the United Kingdom, so I believe we have made that commitment. The Government have not made it explicit and the Prime Minister will not do so before the general election, because we have to address serious budget issues and he is, rightly, giving himself room for manoeuvre. Everyone present knows that defence expenditure is already at historically low levels in terms of its share of national wealth. We are making economies in defence and in my view our defence posture is, frankly, incoherent, because we can no longer afford a coherent defence policy for the United Kingdom owing to the amount of resources we are devoting to it.

That is an issue for another debate, but it illustrates the point about the cost of acquiring this system. In the 1980s it cost between 2.5% and 3% of the total defence budget. The cost of renewing the system will be at about the same level of real expenditure, which means that it will cost about 6% of the defence budget. In private conversations with colleagues who share the same background as me, when I ask them whether they would rather have that money spent on the field army or on acquiring this weapons system, their answer is clear: they would rather have it spent on actual deployable defence—soldiers, sailors, airmen and the equipment deployed with them on operations—or even on the deterrence that a decent set of conventional armed forces provides. The names of some of the distinguished former Chiefs of the Defence Staff or those in other roles who have questioned the value for money of taking such a sum out of the defence budget have already been paraded.

I would argue very strongly to the Defence Secretary that if we are committed to this system, we should understand that it is a political weapons system, and that it is of very doubtful military utility. I do not entirely buy the deterrence argument, but that is a qualified position, because all these things are matters of judgment. If we do buy the argument, however, that should not come at the expense of a coherent defence programme. If we need 2% of GDP to provide a coherent conventional defence programme, we should buy this political weapons system not out of that budget, but from a separate source of funding.

In an intervention on the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), I asked just how much he would spend on acquiring this weapons system. He represents Barrow, where the submarines will be made, so I understand that his view of their value is rather different from that of other Members. However, we must answer this question, which we have not properly addressed: at what point does the expense become unaffordable for the United Kingdom?

I am perfectly content to continue to shelter under the American nuclear umbrella. I accept that the decision matrix would be profoundly different if the United States of America was not a rock-solid ally, the Atlantic alliance was not extremely important to the Americans or we could not place the same degree of reliability on their support as we now do. If we had good reason to believe that the United States was not going to be intimately tied into the defence of ourselves and Europe, the decision would be different. I happen to believe, however, that our interests are so closely intertwined, as they have been in all sorts of ways, that we can continue to rely on that alliance.

Frankly, I am not sure that the Americans place very much value on a separate source of nuclear deterrence decision making in London. I think that they would prefer us to bring such resources to the table in the form of deployable conventional forces. The United States Government will not of course take a public view that embarrasses the UK Government, but if we scratched them, we would find that they would rather we had more effective conventional forces.

I do not buy the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex that we would lose the money from the defence budget altogether and not be able to spend it on anything else. However, even if the money was lost, it would have value: £100 billion off the debt or spent on other parts of the public service would be valuable.

I therefore ask: what are we buying with the system? There should be a debate about whether we are buying security or, given the laws of unintended consequences, insecurity. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said that he thought we were buying status for our leaders so that they can parade themselves appropriately at conferences. I do not buy that argument—our leaders are perfectly capable of thinking in hard terms about what hard security is affordable—but I am concerned about the political background to this discussion, and about whether we can have a sensible debate on the cost-benefit analysis of acquiring this system.

The problem is the inheritance of the politics of the 1980s. When the decision was made to acquire the Vanguard and Trident system, the then Labour Opposition came out against it in 1983 as part of the “longest suicide note in history” that they presented to the United Kingdom electorate. I think that that policy was wrong and that at the time, because of the cold war, it was right to renew the deterrent. The people of the United Kingdom took the same view in the general election, as they did about the rest of the basket of promises that Michael Foot and his colleagues presented to the country, and they gave that policy, very properly, an extremely large raspberry and possibly the biggest Conservative majority in the history of Parliament—I am sure I will be corrected if that is wrong.

The scarring effect of that event, and the fact that there might be some proper debate, particularly on the Opposition Benches, means that dissent is suppressed. I am proud to stand here as a Conservative and question the efficacy of the decision under discussion, particularly in terms of its opportunity cost. It may be that I have discounted my future career prospects to such an extent that I feel free to make these points, but for the benefit of the Government Whip who is making a note, I say that this is where my judgment lies currently, but it would not prevent me from exercising collective responsibility to support the decision as part of any future Administration. [Laughter.] We should be able to have this debate and ask questions. How much money would we be prepared to spend on this system if its cost was not going to be 6% of the defence budget? What about if it was 10% or 20% of the defence budget? At what point does it cease to be sensible to invest in this system?

Many Members support deterrence in principle, or at least are not against the possession of weapons of this destructive power in principle—that is a perfectly proper position to take, although I do not share it because to a degree I buy the arguments that I grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s about the principle of a defence. I agree that during the cold war these weapons ensured that the world did not elide into direct hot war engagements that had the ability to escalate into catastrophe. The potential for catastrophe at the root of deterrence in a cold war, bipolar world kept us safe, but we are now in a different world and different calculations must be made.

My view is that for the United Kingdom, 6% of the defence budget is not justifiable, and that also relates to my view of Britain’s place in the world. Unlike most of my colleagues, I would be prepared to put our permanent seat on the Security Council up for negotiation and debate in a reform of the UN Security Council, to try to make that institution more effective. I think it is difficult to justify a British veto on the UN Security Council, and because it is so difficult to justify, the veto is hardly ever used by the United Kingdom. We must also think about Britain’s role in the world, and I do not think that we have properly had the debate about exactly what we can bring to the councils of the world, and what Britain’s position in the world should be.

We will be much better equipped to defend our interests if we are a wealthy, successful, entrepreneurial and trading nation that looks out to the entire world, and I am not sure that landing us with a weapons system that we are never going to use is a sensible use of resources, and it therefore might become a burden—

Defence Procurement

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The statement that I have made today has no impact on the announcement I made a few weeks ago about the rationalisation of the shipbuilding industry and BAE Systems’ decision to concentrate complex warship building on the Clyde.

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

I commend my right hon. Friend’s statement, not least because it is the statement that the Public Administration Committee wanted him to make, having expressed in our report on procurement some scepticism that the GoCo would work. Is not the DE&S plus plus proposal still something of a contortion to get round stupid, outdated and silly restrictions on the ability to retain senior civil servants in role as senior responsible owners over the lifetime of projects and on the ability to bring in new people with the right commercial skills? Why are we having to go through this exercise when we should be reforming the civil service so that this kind of flexibility is available to all Government Departments and all procurement projects?

[Mr Hammond]

I understand my hon. Friend’s position, which is long held and loudly expressed, but DE&S is, if not unique, a very unusual organisation within the civil service. It is almost wholly commercial in what it does. Most of its interaction is with the commercial sector and it is competing directly for skills with the private sector marketplace. It is not like a policy making department. It is absurd that we are constrained to deal with civil servants whose job is commercial in nature in the same way as we deal with policy making civil servants in a central Whitehall policy Department. The freedoms and flexibilities that the Treasury and the Cabinet Office have agreed for DE&S plus will free us from that constraint, which will make DE&S plus a much more credible and commercially focused proposition. However, as I have said, I would not like to rule out the possibility of challenging it in the future with a GoCo competition to keep it on its toes. Let us try everything and make sure we get the best value for money for the taxpayer.

Better Defence Acquisition

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As my hon. Friend knows, the TUPE transfer of an enterprise does not imply any reduction in job numbers at the outset. It is true that a private sector partner taking on a work force of this nature will, over time, look to reconfigure the shape of the work force to make the business as efficient as possible. However, it will have to do that within the constraints of the TUPE regulations, normal employment law and the arrangements that are in place for negotiation with the trade unions.

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

I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and for the White Paper, which will be of great interest to the Public Administration Committee because it is conducting an inquiry into procurement across Government, including defence procurement. I remain to be convinced that a GoCo is the right idea. If, as he says, the objective is to be able to recruit and reward staff at market rates, why can we not legislate to do that in the Ministry of Defence, instead of contracting it out? After all, is not the acquisition of defence matériel and equipment a core function of the Ministry of Defence? We must have those skills in-house, because we cannot expect to manage them in some arm’s length contractor.

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend says that he remains to be convinced; I am glad to confirm that I remain to be convinced. It is exactly the point of the assessment phase to convince us collectively that this is the right way to go. This proposal is about being able to employ staff at market rates, but that is only a small part of the total challenge. There are many other cultural and behavioural changes that need to be delivered to make it work. He is right that defence procurement is a core function. That is why we will maintain a competent customer function in the MOD, led by the Chief of Defence Matériel and supported by an external private sector consultant to build the intelligent customer function, to ensure that we are in a robust position to manage the GoCo contractor, if that is the route that we choose, not just now but through future evolutions of the GoCo and future appointments of GoCo contractors.

Nuclear Deterrent

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

The answer to that is catered for by the point I made earlier: it is not the weapons we have to fear but the nature of the regimes that have them. I have no desire to lecture other democracies on whether or not they should have nuclear weapons, as that is a question for them and it is about whether they feel they can afford to do that. It does not bother me if democracies have nuclear weapons, but I do reserve the right to lecture dictatorships, and preferably to try to thwart, baulk and deter them from having such weapons, because they are the threat, not the weapons themselves.

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

rose—

[Dr Lewis]

I will give way, but it will be for the last time as otherwise I will be in danger of taking too much time. [Interruption.] I thank my hon. Friend for his courtesy in resuming his seat.

I wish briefly to make four political points. The first political argument is that when people are asked whether it is safer for this country to continue to possess nuclear weapons as long as other countries have them, a large majority of the population consistently take the view that we should do so and that it would be unwise and dangerous to renounce them unilaterally. We can ask different poll questions that seem to point to a different answer, but when that question is asked, the answer is surprisingly consistent.

The second political argument is that in the 1980s, under cold war conditions, two general elections demonstrated the toxic effect of one-sided disarmament proposals on a party’s prospects of gaining power. The third argument is that it was and remains widely believed—this refers to the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) a few moments ago—that the nuclear stalemate of the cold war enabled all-out conflict between the majors powers to be avoided for 50 years, despite their mutual hostility and in contrast to what happened in those many regional theatres where communists and their enemies could and did fight without fear of nuclear escalation. The final political argument is that the ending of the east-west confrontation has not altered the balance of public opinion on this question. First, that is because a danger could easily re-emerge of a reversion to a confrontation of that sort. Secondly, it is because even today there are unpleasant regimes, such as Iran’s, on the point of acquiring nuclear weapons and some, such as North Korea’s, that have already done so.

The role of our strategic nuclear force remains what it has always been: to deter any power armed with mass destruction weapons from using them against us, in the belief, true or false, that nobody would retaliate on our behalf. The use of our deterrent consists of its preventive effect on the behaviour of our enemies. The actual launching of a Trident missile would mark the failure of deterrence and would presuppose that a devastating attack had already been inflicted on our country.

Because strategic nuclear deterrence is largely irrelevant to the current counter-insurgency campaigns with which the British Army has been involved, some senior Army officers have been suggesting that we must choose between fighting “the war” of the present and insuring against the more conventional prospect of state-versus-state conflict in the future. I say that that choice is unacceptable, and that the underlying message that the era of high-intensity, state-on-state warfare is gone for good is a dangerous fallacy. Every sane individual hopes that such warfare will never return, but to rely on that in the face of past experience would be extremely foolhardy. The lesson of warfare in the 20th century, repeated time and again, was that when conflicts broke out they usually took their victims by surprise. Obvious examples are: the failure to anticipate the first world war; the follies of the “10-year rule” from 1919 to 1932; and the entirely unanticipated attacks on Israel in 1973, the Falklands in 1982, Kuwait in 1990 and the United States in 2001. Conversely, and on a brighter note, the speed with which the Soviet empire unravelled from 1989 left even its sternest critics largely nonplussed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I did not say that they would be willing to see Moscow flattened—most certainly they would not. I am saying that there are other ways of inflicting damage on Russia that it would consider unacceptable.

I mentioned that there will be a vast opportunity cost to be paid if we decide to commit these funds, which, let us refresh our memories, in today’s money will be approximately £25 billion to £30 billion on the capital investment in a further generation of submarines. On top of that, we have to factor in the running costs of a nuclear deterrent on this scale for 30 or more years of through-life costs—more than £3 billion a year in today’s money. Beginning to total that out and factoring in decommissioning at the end, we are talking about an expenditure of more than £100 billion. We need to look closely at whether that is justified in the context of the size of our defence budget, and what we are able to make available for other forms of defence and security in an increasingly dangerous and changing world.

[Mr Jenkin]

My hon. Friend has started to talk about 20, 30, 40 years ahead. Would he like to describe the strategic context in which we might be operating a nuclear deterrent in 20, 30, 40 years’ time, or indeed find ourselves operating without one? What is it going to be like then?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

The truth of the matter is that none of us knows. If we retain a nuclear deterrent of any description and any scale, it is an insurance policy against the unknown. I am saying that the current nuclear deterrent is scaled specifically to overcome the threat that we believed the Soviet Union posed in 1980. As we look to an unknown future over the course of this century, we have to decide what proportion of our defence spend and effort should go into this one part of our defence livery, and the opportunity cost of doing that.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I commend the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who has just made a powerful contribution to the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) for securing it. I congratulate the Minister on delivering a model speech, which in a short time went through all the key arguments that justify the Government’s spending the money.

We need to lay more emphasis not just on how we might imagine the weapons system could be deployed but on the fact that it is in use every single day, shaping the global security environment that we enjoy today. It is no coincidence that the advent of nuclear weapons on the international scene has led to the longest period of peace among the superpowers and major powers of the world that we have ever seen.

War between super-states is now unthinkable because of nuclear weapons. That is rather a good thing and certainly an argument for our maintaining our inherited role of acting as a major democratic, friendly, benign, positive influence in global affairs, with our international role enhanced by nuclear weapons.

The issue is the sort of country that we are and that we want to continue to be. We are a country with global reach, global influence, global interests and the ability to enhance global security—not just for the world as a whole, but for the security of our own people.

Were we, irresponsibly, simply to dispose of our nuclear capability, we would be upsetting a balance that we may not even understand. We are down to fewer than 200 nuclear warheads. China, which has been mentioned, is increasing its number of warheads pretty dramatically with two new intercontinental ballistic missile systems and a new submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missile system. Russia, with its thousands and thousands of warheads—far more than it could possibly want—is building new nuclear weapons systems and new nuclear submarines for the delivery of those systems. We are not living in a world that is disarming, despite the incredibly generous gestures that our country has made. The next move downwards is not for us, but for others. If others will not make those moves, we must continue to guarantee our security and that of our allies.

I end on one fundamental point. Much is being made of the cost of Trident. I respect the view of those who over the years have been proved wrong but nevertheless carry on with their campaign to disarm our nuclear weapons. However, nothing is less honest than the idea that there is some cheaper system that will maintain the deterrent effect of our nuclear weapons or that somehow our current weapons system is vastly overspecified because of the Moscow criterion, to which completely obscure and mad reference has been made. That has nothing to do with the capability that we deploy today. It is totally irrelevant and a means of spreading disinformation about the credibility of our system so that the Liberal Democrats can get rid of our nuclear weapons system.

The Liberal Democrats know that there is no cheaper system. Just how cheap is it? It represents 0.1% of GDP over the lifetime of the system. I challenge anybody to produce any defence expenditure that can produce so much global influence.

Army 2020

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman says that the announcement is not underpinned by any strategic analysis, but he supported a Government who did not conduct a strategic defence review in 12 years. The announcement is underpinned by the findings of the strategic defence and security review of 2010, which established a National Security Council, which continuously reviews the strategic context.

The hon. Gentleman asks about people who will remain in the forces. I hope to be in a position very soon to make an announcement about the military pension scheme, and we are well advanced in designing what the military calls the new employment model, which will set out more clearly our offer to military personnel, including how we can make the remuneration package that underpins the armed services more flexible and responsive to the needs of individuals than it has been in the past.

The Army has well-structured arrangements in place to support those leaving the service, but we are looking at additional measures, including working with external charities, to ensure that they are supported in every way possible.

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

However painful the statement is, and it must be bitter for my right hon. Friend to deliver it, we recognise that it is an inevitable consequence of the circumstances we face. Does he accept, and will he underline in his response, that there is an element of gambling in every defence review and decision, and that the ability to regenerate is central? Will he also confirm that the importance of maintaining the equipment programme—equipment takes much longer to regenerate—is reflected in the priorities of his Department?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is critical that we make the Army sustainable by dealing with the underlying fiscal chaos that we inherited. Labour did not deal with the equipment programme but simply pushed the problems further to the right, building up a larger and larger bubble of unfunded theoretical projects that would never be delivered. That does not help anyone. He is correct, of course, that the ability to regenerate is critical to the Army’s strategic resilience. We do not know what will happen in five or 10 years, so the ability to regenerate capability is our greatest protection for the future.

Defence Reform

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

I would talk about the developing situation in the middle east, some of the decisions made post-SDSR in taking away maritime capability, and the whole issue of the deployability of our armed forces. All those decisions were taken within a financial straitjacket, instead of addressing questions such as where we need to deploy in the world and what our priorities are. That has overridden the security needs that are so vital and that were outlined so well in the Green Paper.

As a former Ministry of Defence Minister, I know only too well that the easiest ways to make the kind of in-year savings in the defence budget that are being demanded by the Treasury are to scrap capability or to make personnel cuts. However, the Government have scrapped important capabilities—Nimrod and the Harrier fleet—without any plans as to how they will be replaced. It appears that Ministers have been inflexible in their pursuit of short-term savings at the expense of our long-term security. Too often we are given the impression that the Government are presiding over decline, rather than planning for the future. The Government must reassess the security and spending assumptions on which the review was based.

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

How would a Labour Government have dealt with the £38 billion overhang that the Conservatives inherited from the previous Labour Government? Also, is the hon. Gentleman saying he would, in fact, spend more on defence than the current Government? He should be explicit about that, but his motion is not explicit.

[Mr Jones]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman has asked about the £38 billion black hole, because it has become folklore, but the Government have not produced any evidence to justify that figure. Let me quote from an excellent Defence Committee report—which I am surprised he has not read as he is a former member of that Committee. It says:

“We note that the MOD now state the genuine size of the gap is substantially in excess of £38 billion. However, we also note the Secretary of State’s assertion that the ‘for the first time in a generation, the MOD will have brought its plans and budget broadly into balance, allowing it to plan with confidence for the delivery of the future equipment programme’. Without proper detailed figures neither statement can be verified.”

We should also consider the evidence given to the Committee by the then Secretary of State. He promised the Committee he would give details, but the final report states, at paragraph 205:

“We are surprised that this assessment has not yet begun and expect to receive a timetable for this exercise in response to this Report.”

The £38 billion figure has been bandied around ever since it was spun out of Conservative central office in the election campaign. The Government have been asked on numerous occasions to justify it, but they have not done so. They should.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

My right hon. Friend, like me, knows the MOD budget very well. Clearly, what the Government have done is to take out in-year capability. We should also remember the reductions in armed forces personnel—the people who are paying for some of this. My right hon. Friend is correct: the idea that such a big black hole can be filled in two years is complete nonsense. [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), says that it is 10 years, but that is not the impression the Government have been giving. All their decisions, such as slashing personnel numbers, are predicated on this £38 billion black hole. Earlier last year, the previous Secretary of State stopped using that figure—for a while. Suddenly, under the new Secretary of State, it has come back. The Government have got to explain their use of it, because it is the entire raison d’être for some of the cuts they are making.

[Mr Jenkin]

I remind the hon. Gentleman, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) and the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) that the £38 billion figure was furnished to the Defence Committee under the previous Labour Government when the hon. Gentleman was a Minister in the Ministry of Defence. At the same time, Mr Bernard Gray produced a report saying that, on present plans, the MOD could order no new equipment at all for the next 10 years, so dire was the state of its finances. It is only by bringing defence spending within the Department back into balance that any new equipment has been able to be ordered at all.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry but that is complete nonsense. The hon. Gentleman should read the NAO report that I referred to earlier, which makes the assumption that many people have made in respect of flat cash. I will read the quote again, because he has obviously not picked up the argument:

“The size of the gap is highly sensitive to the budget growth assumptions used. If the Defence budget remained constant in real terms, and using the Department’s forecast for defence inflation of 2.7 per cent, the gap would now be £6 billion”.

There is a huge difference between £6 billion and the £38 billion figure that the Government are claiming. Even if, in line with the NAO report, we assume a flat cash budget for 10 years, we only get to a figure of £36 billion. Where the Government get the extra £2 billion from, I do not know. This issue was also dealt with in Bernard Gray’s report, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend said, the £38 billion figure is based on the principle that every single piece of equipment that was planned for would actually be delivered. However, anyone who knows the defence budget knows that that is not how things work. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but the £38 billion figure is a fiction, and this Government have got to justify it, because they are using it to justify some of their most draconian cuts, not only in equipment but to the service terms and conditions of members of our armed forces.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Harvey]

I do not accept either the analysis or the figures offered by the hon. Gentleman. Scotland does well out of defence, and defence does well out of Scotland. We plan our defences for the defence of the United Kingdom as a whole in the most coherent way we can, and Scotland will do a great deal better out of being part of the UK’s defences than it will ever do if it goes on its own and plans its own defence force.

[Mr Jenkin]

There is speculation that the process is being elongated, perhaps over a number of months, because of political considerations. Does my hon. Friend accept what a large number of armed service men and women are saying—that uncertainty is extremely corrosive, damaging and morale sapping, and the sooner these decisions, however difficult and unpleasant they are, can be made, the better?

Nuclear-powered Submarines

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Our strategic missile submarines serve two functions. They provide a national strategic deterrence and they are committed to NATO as part of the NATO strategic deterrence. Part of NATO’s strategic posture involves having more than one nuclear-capable platform.

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

Will my right hon. Friend explain, particularly to the Scottish nationalists, how many jobs would be lost in Scotland if the investment were to be cancelled or if Scotland were to vote for separation from the rest of the United Kingdom? In that case, all the UK defence jobs in Scotland would be withdrawn.

[Mr Hammond]

Ultimately at stake are the 6,000 jobs —civilians, military and contractors directly employed in Her Majesty’s naval dockyard of the Clyde and at Coulport. Those jobs would be lost if the submarines were not built and deployed at Faslane.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

I will come on to deal with that precise point. I have no quarrel with the hon. Gentleman for making it.

The current Trident system relies heavily on US logistical, capacity, technological and military know-how. It is nearly impossible to imagine any circumstances in which we would launch a nuclear attack, much less that we would do so independently of the Americans. Likewise, were Britain to be attacked by a nuclear power, the terms of our membership of NATO would require a joint response by all members, including the US.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Brown]

I cannot give way because of the rules on these things.

NATO is a mutual defence pact. It is a fundamental strength that its armoury includes the nuclear capability of the US. There has always been a question over why Britain needs to duplicate NATO’s nuclear capability, rather than more usefully supplement its conventional capacity.

When I first entered Parliament in 1983, I resisted joining the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I did not support our decision to go ahead with an independent submarine-based system of our own. However, I did support Britain’s membership of NATO, which CND did not. At the time, that was regarded in the Labour party as a very establishment and right-wing position. It is a small irony of Labour politics that the same position is today seen as very left-wing.

When the decision was taken to adopt the Trident system in the early 1980s, there was an understanding that in exchange for non-proliferation by the non-nuclear powers, there would be restraint by the existing nuclear powers, in particular the US and Russia, when it came to further weapons development and upgrades. That idea was enshrined in article VI of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It can be argued that that has been more honoured in the breach by countries that did not possess a nuclear capability, but that do now. The underlying principle, however, seems to me still to be sound.

The large financial outlay that the Government are committed to in planning to replace our independent deterrent could be better spent in a number of ways. During the economic boom, I argued that we ought to better equip our troops, invest in the specialist field of anti-terrorism capability in line with the real threats that we face, and supplement our existing overseas aid budget. We now face new threats. To take one example, the money that we spend on Trident could be used to bring down substantially the tuition fees of every student. I think that cutting a generation adrift from higher education poses a bigger threat to our nation than the idea that a foreign power with nuclear weaponry would uniquely threaten to use it against us, and not the rest of NATO, and would somehow be able to disapply NATO’s founding terms. The real nuclear dangers of the future come from rogue states and terrorism. The possession of an independent nuclear deterrent does not make us safer. A better investment would be in anti-terrorism capabilities.

Three main arguments are put forward by proponents of Trident replacement. The first is that it is the best weapon that money can buy. The second is that it guarantees a seat on the United Nations Security Council. The final argument is that it contributes to our ability to punch above our weight in the world. I argue that it is not much of a weapon if the circumstances in which it may be used cannot be envisaged. Fundamental reform of the United Nations Security Council is long overdue and the difficulty, as we all know, is getting agreement on what that reform should be. I also think that other countries might like us more if we stopped punching above our weight in the world. We might be better thought of by the international community if we settled for being the medium-sized European nation state that we are, rather than the imperial power that we used to be.

We have a choice as a country: do we want to continue to drift into spending billions of pounds on supplementing a nuclear capability that we already possess through NATO or do we want to spend that money on tackling the problems that Britain actually faces in squeezed economic times? Surely we should resolve this issue now with a vote in this Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I believe that the world is a more dangerous place than it has ever been during my time in Parliament. I believe that it is a more dangerous place than it was during the cold war. That was a more stable situation. We have heard about the resurgent and more authoritarian Russia. China is increasingly muscling its way into various parts of the world. Iran will soon be a nuclear power. The Arab spring might throw up more problems than solutions.

As a maritime nation, the Royal Navy always has played and always will play an essential part in defending our freedoms. I do not believe that the Royal Navy is a leftover from the cold war or a replay of second world war convoy systems. It is an essential part of our defence. I am extremely worried about what is happening to the Royal Navy. It will soon be the weakest it has been since the mid-19th century. In 1982, the Royal Navy was only just capable of retaking the Falklands. I have a list of the appalling casualties that we suffered and the number of our ships that were sunk. We just managed it.

Since 1997, our armed forces have been cut by 12% and 24,000 people have been made unemployed. Since 1975, the number of cruisers, destroyers and frigates has been cut by a staggering two thirds. The fleet of minesweepers, which, along with the Americans, will be vital in keeping oil flowing through the strait of Hormuz if Iran makes any moves there, has been cut from 40 vessels in 1975 to 15 today. Those are worrying figures.

We are constantly told that we need larger ships and that we do not need so many. I am not suggesting that we can make direct comparisons with the past or that we should look back to the Royal Navy of 1809, which had a fighting strength of 773 vessels. I remember standing on the deck of a vast American aircraft carrier when I was a member of the Defence Committee and the captain saying, “The ocean is a very large place and I can hide my aircraft carrier.” However, we are faced with enormous problems of piracy and one cannot solve the problems of maritime protection by having just 19 major vessels in the Royal Navy.

Let us consider the threats that we face. I am not saying that they will necessarily come to anything, but they are there and they are real. Let us compare our strength with that of Argentina. We have seven destroyers and it has five. That is not an overwhelming predominance for the Royal Navy. We have a similar number of aircraft carriers, namely none.

[Mr Jenkin]

The importance of aircraft carriers, with their carrier-borne air defence for the fleet and carrier-borne strike capacity, is that one is able to operate away from the home nation. If we fought another Falklands war, it would be all too close to Argentina’s home bases and thousands of miles from ours.

[Mr Leigh]

That is precisely the point that I was going to make next. If there were a war with Iran or Argentina, we would not be fighting it in the channel. In the case of Argentina, we would be fighting it thousands of miles from any shore-based defence systems. I therefore do not believe that the figures alone give an accurate basis from which we can draw comfort.

--- Later in debate ---

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

The strategic defence and security review is having a significant long-term impact on the UK’s defence posture and on our ability to deter aggression and to shape the global strategic environment to reflect UK national interests, and yet we still aspire to a global role. The Government argue that they have established an adaptable posture for UK defences, but the loss of whole capabilities such as carrier strike and maritime reconnaissance, and the paring back of virtually everything else, will leave the UK able to mount only limited operations of limited scale. After Afghanistan, numbers in the British Army will be further cut to 87,000, or perhaps even 84,000. Even the brigade-plus we currently deploy in Helmand—a fighting force of just 1,500 men—will be impossible to sustain other than for short durations. Libya was a success, and that reflected luck and political daring on the part of our political leaders, as well as the extraordinary inventiveness and resilience of our armed forces personnel. However, that does not prove that the SDSR is a success.

The question is what should be done now. As the United States has just announced a new, leaner defence policy, leaving us in Europe more exposed, the world is not becoming safer. Clearly, without money, we must start thinking. I was grateful to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) extol the virtues of strategic thinking. To date, the fundamental failures at the Ministry of Defence have been intellectual, not technical, and changing the intellectual dimension does not need to cost a lot or require new institutions. The MOD needs to demonstrate new strategy and new operational concepts. There has been no real attempt yet to change what the MOD does. Trying to do the same as before on half the budget will fail. Less of the same will not work, because we no longer deploy critical mass. Nor can we solve the problem merely by doing things better.

We need a “Hammond review”, quietly to start to build capacity and to think about how to do things differently at low cost. That approach is alien to MOD culture and the defence industries, and it requires new people and new lead contractors. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State should create a new, competent, imaginative, trustworthy team with real technical expertise—not consultants but dedicated people with collective responsibility, continuity and a real stake in seeing the problems solved. The civil service cannot do that in the traditional way, which underlines the weakness of putting it into a dominant position on the Defence Board, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) pointed out.

The Chief of the Defence Staff should build the new team for the Secretary of State, but he would still need to monitor it closely. It needs external sources of ideas and expertise, and it must explore how the MOD can be enabled to adapt and evolve using its own resources so that it can generate and regenerate the forms of power that the UK, and indeed Europe, need in this rapidly changing world. That requires a recreation of the country’s competitive stance, just as the US’s competitive stance ensures its technological and industrial dominance. The Secretary of State should involve others from Whitehall and Parliament, from the City and commerce, and from other like-minded defence ministries and industries. We cannot rely wholly on analysis by US organisations such as RAND.

There are similar problems in our defence industry. How much industrial research and development capacity has been lost in the past 15 years? Does anybody know? With such a small budget, it no longer makes sense to have prime contractors. The more we use them, the less adaptable and the less able to reduce costs we will be. Reliance on them has proved no substitute for the MOD as an intelligent customer. The UK has always been good at small, and we should exploit that advantage by harnessing the networks of small businesses that are truly innovative and inventive but currently find it impossible to get their ideas into the MOD and the armed forces.

The new equipment programme must reflect what we need and can afford, which will depend on the capacity to generate what we need when it is needed. The MOD faces huge challenges, and the reconstitution and regeneration of the previously extant force is no longer an option. We have used up our force and cannot replace it. The only viable option is a new concept of responsiveness, and it is time to think bravely and boldly. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State put it in his recent speech to the Atlantic Council:

“Necessity drives innovation—and it breaks down barriers…With budgets so tight, Allies need to revisit approaches and ideas that might previously have seemed politically unacceptable.”

That must apply at home as well as abroad. I was encouraged by the tone of his speech today, and I hope that the MOD is working towards those goals.

Afghanistan

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The draw-down of troops will take place between 2012 and 2014, and the profile of that draw-down has not yet been decided or confirmed. At the same time, the Afghan national security forces will be taking an ever greater role in maintaining security in the country. I would like to think that by that stage the political process will be able to go on in a constitutional fashion, while the Afghan national security forces protect the security of the country and the population and create the stable baseline that will allow for that political process.

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

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his kind and sincere words about my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox). I also express my faith in my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State; I am sure that he will fulfil our expectations that he will do a good job in his new role. Is he concerned that President Karzai has, once again, ruled out any dialogue with the Taliban when it is quite obvious that any stable political settlement in Kabul is essential if security is to be maintained as we withdraw from Afghanistan?

[Mr Hammond]

It is clear that politicians in Kabul will have to respond to the assault on the peace process that the assassination of former President Rabbani represents. However, it is also clear that in the long run there is no alternative to an inclusive peace process that will bring all elements of the Afghan population into a durable and sustainable settlement.

Defence Reform

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The hon. Gentleman always fails to point out that across the piece far more people in the defence industry are based in Scotland and a disproportionate amount of defence industry spending goes to Scotland. Scotland might have fewer positions in terms of military rank, but these are Crown forces and their footprint is spread evenly, one way or another, across the United Kingdom.

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

May I commend my right hon. Friend for getting down to the unglamorous business of how his Department works, and may I welcome the Levene report as the kind of corporate change programme that the Public Administration Committee is seeking to recommend for every Department? Will he bear it in mind, however, that such corporate change takes years and depends on united, consistent and sustained leadership from the top and throughout the Department in order to bring about the necessary cultural change that I am sure his people want to see?