Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will know, having been in the House for many years, that Governments do not publish the Attorney General’s advice. We do not believe in any way that we are breaking the nuclear proliferation treaty, and what we really need to do is make sure that we maintain a credible deterrent.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con) [V]]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his Defence Command Paper, which I broadly welcome, in particular the integrated review, which looks forward to the modern threats we face and embraces the capabilities we need to develop to meet those threats. When it comes to the nuclear deterrent, we must remember that this is a bipartisan policy that has been supported by both sides of the House until now and that we want to maintain that consensus. May I echo what has been said about the need for discussion and exploration of why we need to increase the cap on the number of warheads? I am convinced that we need to maintain a credible deterrent, and I am sure that the Government would not be doing this unless there were very strong arguments for doing it to maintain the credibility of the deterrent.

[Mr Wallace]

Obviously, detail around development, use and, indeed, deployment of nuclear warheads is a very sensitive subject. However, I will see what I can do to provide further briefing to Members and to specific Committees, if that is a better way to furnish more detail in a secure environment.

Covid-19 Response: Defence Support

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

From a defence point of view—indeed, I know this from my own background as the Minister for Security—resilience was key to the integrated review. I felt it was important that the integrated view should be used to enhance the use of reserves. Reserves will be part of the long-term future of this nation’s resilience—whether they are civilian reserves in an NHS environment or, indeed, from the armed forces, they are going to be very important. We need to look at how we employ our people to make sure that there is a flow between regulars and reserves and that they are used in a much better way.

In addition to that, we have seen the threat of silent or sub-threshold enemies—disinformation. We have already seen Russia deploy smears, innuendos and disinformation against our Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, at the same time as elements trying to steal secrets through cyber. That is an important example of how we have to be on our guard when our adversaries take advantage of natural disasters or natural phenomena. We have deployed and used the 77th Brigade throughout this process to challenge disinformation, which is obviously an appropriate use of that brigade. When a foreign country makes something up, spreads a rumour and tries to undermine us, we should challenge that.

All those policies are being proved in this pandemic. Members will see front and centre in the integrated review that resilience is one of the main things on which we must always focus if we are to defend the nation.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con) [V]]

This is undoubtedly the greatest national emergency of my lifetime, yet only a small fraction of the available military capacity has been called upon by the rest of the Government—and that is despite the fact that the test and trace operations have been indifferent in performance and the vaccine programme seems to be to be almost entirely dependent on civilian capability that is tested every winter in the best of circumstances. Why does my right hon. Friend think that the Government, or perhaps the rest of the Government, are so confident that civilian organisations are capable of delivering these incredible tasks of such scale, magnitude, importance and urgency without significantly more military capacity, particularly in respect of four-star military capability at the top of these organisations, rather than just one-star?

[Mr Wallace]

I assure my hon. Friend that the four-stars and three-stars are equally busy. I just came from a meeting with a three-star and a four-star on the vaccines and the need to make sure that we are leaning in as much as possible. I understand what my hon. Friend says but, fundamentally, the armed forces have been making a difference. If there was more demand or, indeed, an easy way to deliver the solution to this pandemic, we would have been doing that.

It is not the case, when we talk about numbers in the armed forces, that they are sitting around not doing anything until they are called. My hon. Friend recently called for more assistance for the NHS in Essex. I looked at a number of requests that came in last week and the week before, and it was quite sobering to realise that of the 1,600 clinicians, senior nurses and nurses in the armed forces as regulars, they are all deployed—they are all working in hospitals in Middlesbrough, in the south-west, in Birmingham and in the south-east. They are all there, because even in peacetime—even when we are not fighting a pandemic—instead of having them sitting around, we make sure that they are working in the NHS and augmenting that time. In respect of some of the requests, we are in danger of robbing Peter to pay Paul: I would simply be taking clinicians out of one hospital trust to move them to another one. That is not going to solve the challenge that we have.

I understand what my hon. Friend says and can give him the assurance that I gave to the Labour defence spokesman, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey): we stand ready to do it. It is not like we sit and wait in our rooms waiting for a phone call; we push and, sometimes to the annoyance of some of my colleagues, I push and push and agitate—I am quite a good agitator—to make sure that we try and deliver wherever we can. The Prime Minister is absolutely open to all ideas and we deliver on many occasions.

Armed Forces: Covid-19 Deployment

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I think the hon. Gentleman is aware that Defence has been involved from the outset on planning and logistics. At an early stage, Defence was called on, as it is regularly; we have had, on average, about 130 MACA requests a year for the past few years, and we are well used to working at a local level and a national level with partners across Government. There is a role for the military and a role they can pass on. For example, the military did a fantastic job on working with our partners in Health to provide the mobile testing units, but it is appropriate at some stage, when others get up to speed, that we hand over that task in order to be ready to undertake the next role, which in this case includes the whole-city pilot in Liverpool.

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

NHS Test and Trace has grown from literally zero to being the size of Asda in little more than six months, and it would be difficult to imagine an organisation that has grown so quickly that would not be organisationally challenged. May I suggest that if the MOD has not been asked for headquarters capability, it should offer headquarters capability to NHS Test and Trace, as I am sure it would be welcomed with open arms?

Modernising Defence Programme

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

It is too early in the process for me to be able to comment on that, but I will look into the issue and come back to the hon. Gentleman. Obviously, the whole point of the programme is to look at things afresh. However, we have commented fairly regularly on the increasing threat that we face in the north Atlantic, which has been raised by Members. We must ensure that we have submarines that are able to operate in and defend the north Atlantic.

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

I thank my right hon. Friend for delivering good news to the House, and congratulate him on leveraging the somewhat unexpected and sudden nature of his appointment to the advantage of Her Majesty’s armed forces and the Ministry of Defence. Leveraging control over the defence review back to the Department for the first time since 2010 represents a return of sanity, because the current defence review is proving undeliverable, which shows what happens if policy is divorced from the Department that has to deliver it.

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about this programme being led by the Ministry of Defence. Our armed forces should be leading the programme, because they have the greatest understanding of what is needed, and what support they will require to be most effective going forward.

Defence Capability

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2017 Westminster Hall

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

I shall be brief, Mr Bone. There is a realism that we need to bring to this debate. A capability review starts with what sort of country we want to be, what sort of role we want to play in the world, and the strategic situation that we face; and the only thing that is changing is the strategic situation that we face, which is getting worse. The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre puts state-on-state warfare as a major threat; it is slight now, but growing and will be becoming severe in the next 20 or 30 years. That is the context in which this debate should be seen. We keep hearing, peppered throughout the debate, the noises from colleagues who are complaining that capability is being cut on an arbitrary basis because there is not enough money in the budget. These are not strategic decisions; they are decisions taken to match a year-on-year target, so the impression being given is that the defence budget is really being planned only one year ahead, with the consequences of these cuts.

Let us look back over the last seven years. The coalition Government inherited a black hole in the defence budget of £35 billion. Coupled with George Osborne’s 8% defence cash cut to the headline figure, that meant that we reached 2015 already having suffered a real-terms cut of 17% in the defence budget, regardless of the ongoing pressure of defence cost inflation. Recently, we have suffered the collapse in the value of the pound against the dollar, as has been said; and looking five and 10 years ahead, we are facing another black hole in the defence budget, which will have severe consequences, because the big equipment programmes that tend to dominate defence expenditure are crowding out investment in technology and people. Always it is manpower that takes the cut to protect the big equipment programmes.

We need to concentrate not just on how we are to strategically improve the defence budget to protect the existing programmes. If we are to have such a limited defence budget, we need to learn how to spend more on people, technology and industrial capacity, to be able to build the equipment that we need for the campaign that we are in, rather than finding ourselves with the equipment that we ordered 10 years ago, which is inappropriate for the campaign that we now face. We need to invest more in the people, who are, in the end, the absolute force multiplier in any crisis that we face. It is a big challenge, but if we continue on the present trajectory, the situation will just get worse.

Trident: Test Firing

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

I do not accept that. Previous Governments that the hon. Gentleman supported have not given operational details of previous demonstration and shakedown operations, which comprise the major tests of the systems and sub-systems that we have been dealing with today.

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

May I commend my right hon. Friend for his reticence about getting drawn into this, and may I also commend the Prime Minister for her reticence, which was entirely appropriate given the subject at issue? Is it not rather ironic to hear right hon. and hon. Members complaining about the possible lack of credibility of the deterrent when some of them do not actually believe in the doctrine of deterrence at all? It would be unwise of the Russians or any other potential adversary to suggest that they could take the risk of invading this or that country on the basis that we might have a misfire of one of our missiles.

[Sir Michael Fallon]

Again, I agree with my hon. Friend. We should not forget that there were many in that particular debate who took the opposite view—the view that we no longer need the deterrent. I am particularly pleased that the overwhelming majority of Members of this House, on both sides of this House, voted in favour of renewing the deterrent that has kept us safe for so long.

Royal Naval Deployment: Mediterranean

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. Let me reciprocate by sending our good wishes to Captain Taylor and the crew of Mounts Bay, the 200 Royal Marines embarked on her and the helicopter squadron accompanying her.

So far as sufficiency is concerned, there are five NATO ships on station at the moment—a German ship, which is the flagship of the group, a Greek ship, a Canadian ship, an Italian ship and a Turkish ship—and ours makes that six ships spread out across the Aegean. Of course, there are 22 other members of NATO, and I hope that they will consider what contribution they can make. Mounts Bay is a substantial ship and, with a helicopter platform, it can contribute significantly to the surveillance, particularly of the middle part of the Aegean. We envisage that Mounts Bay will operate mainly in waters just west of Chios.

In so far as the shipbuilding strategy is relevant, we are developing the strategy in the light of the SDSR, as the hon. Gentleman knows, and we hope to complete it later this year. On his attempt to bring NATO and European Union membership into this, let me make this clear to him: the mission in the sea between Libya and Italy is a European Union mission, because in dealing with the new Libyan Government, it may need the legal authorities that the European Union can add; the group deployed in the Aegean is a NATO mission, because it of course involves a ship of the Turkish navy and is largely dealing with migrants from Turkey, which is a member of NATO. That perfectly illustrates that we need to be members of both NATO and the European Union, and that being members of both gives us the best of both worlds.

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

I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and, indeed, the Royal Navy for its commitment to this mission, which demonstrates that we have an important role to play in European defence and security. By making it clear that this is a NATO mission, he underlines the point that NATO provides the security of our continent, not the European Union, as the Government seek to pretend.

[Michael Fallon]

This is a NATO mission—it was proposed by Germany, which is leading this particular standing maritime group—but the equally important mission in the Tyrrhenian sea, between Sicily and Libya, is a European Union mission. There are other examples of European Union missions—in Bosnia, and off the horn of Africa—that have been equally effective in saving lives.

Defence Implementation Road Map

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 General Committees

[The Chair]

We now have until 3.35 pm for questions. At my discretion, I will allow supplementary questions.

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

It is a pleasure, Mr Hanson, to serve under your chairmanship. May I ask the Minister why we support EU defence industrial policy when we do not have a defence industrial policy of our own?

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. We are not supporting EU industrial policy; we are supporting initiatives by the EDA to do what is sometimes called “speed dating” to encourage companies in different European countries to talk about how they can work together to reduce the massive overcapacity in the European defence industry and to get better value for money. To expand that answer slightly, one of our specific contributions has been to persuade countries to look at cross-purchase, or reciprocal purchase, as well as at several nations collaborating, because that is often a cheaper and more effective way of getting good value for defence.

[Mr Jenkin]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. May I remind him that in the 2010 Conservative manifesto we were going to pull out of the European Defence Agency? Then, under the coalition, we were told that we could not pull out of the EDA because we were in coalition. Now we are not in coalition, but we are still participating in the EDA. Why have we changed our policy?

[Mr Brazier]

We regularly review our membership of the EDA. The most recent study took place after I became a Minister. It is a relatively small budget and a simple tactical choice. In fact, one EU country chooses not to participate: Denmark. The choice is entirely pragmatic. At the moment, the small budget spent offers value for money, we feel, because in a number of areas we can see that savings are provided. The EU is not a competitor with NATO, at least not as we are formulating it, but having the EU as a forum where we can discuss participation in various collaborative projects—my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset mentioned collaboration—intellectual property rights, dual use and so on, provides good value in some areas. We do not have an ideological commitment to remain a member, but an independent study has looked at it in the past 12 months and we believe it offers good value for money.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brazier]

The EDA is an intergovernmental agreement. Denmark is not a member, although Denmark is a member of the EU. I tried to make it clear from the beginning of my speech that the Government’s policy is to stop the Commission from expanding its competencies. From time to time we review our membership of the EDA; it has a small budget, which is doing useful work in a number of areas. It has saved us money—I mentioned two or three of the areas where it has done so—but we are not allowing the Commission to develop an industrial or a defence industrial policy for Europe. We have no intention of doing so.

[Mr Jenkin]

It is interesting how much assertion and denial has to be done to explain why it is in our interest to be involved with this at all, but I commend my hon. Friend for starving the EDA of the cash that it craves. Other member states would willingly vote for that, but we use our veto to prevent it, which certainly keeps things in check to a degree. However, will he clarify why, when every strategic defence review from 1998 onwards described, as he just did, NATO as the cornerstone of our defence, the 2010 SDSR did not?

[Mr Brazier]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind comments on my exercise of the veto last year. My noble Friend Earl Howe is going over to do that next week. The short answer to my hon. Friend’s question is that I do not know. I congratulate him on his observation, and I would be surprised if NATO was not pretty central to the next SDSR.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am most grateful for that assurance. Rather than repeating what the 2010 review said—it referred to

“our status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a leading member of NATO, the EU and other international organisations”,

as though NATO and the EU were pari passu with each other—may I suggest to the Minister that we include the words, “NATO is the cornerstone of our defence” in the 2015 SDSR?

[The Chair]

Order. Before the Minister answers, I remind the Committee that we are dealing with European document No. 11358/14, “A New Deal for European Defence”. Although matters relating to 2010 may have relevance to the wider debate, the focus of questions should be on that document.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brazier]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend, but I can only repeat what I said earlier. The EU provides collective defence capability in a small number of niche areas where NATO has chosen not to. I have mentioned several times, because it is of particular national interest to us as a country that still has a significant merchant fleet, the joint EU action off the horn of Africa, which has been a triumph—piracy there has virtually stopped. It is run from Northwood by the British, although, I am sorry to say, we have not had much in the way of naval vessels in it in the past year or two. The French-led operation in Mali is another such example. I thought that the willingness of EU countries to get together occasionally and tackle issues that NATO, for one reason or another, chooses not to was relatively uncontroversial.

The first half of my hon. and gallant Friend’s quote on Europe’s defence capability is true. The industries are in the individual countries and the policy remains a member state matter. We have made it absolutely clear—I do not think I could have made it clearer—that we have resisted successfully every attempt by the Commission to try to dictate to us in this area.

[Mr Jenkin]

Will my hon. Friend clarify whether section 2 provisions of the treaty on European Union are justiciable by the European Court of Justice inasmuch as they affect defence and the European Defence Agency?

[Mr Brazier]

I will have to wait for official advice on that. I will return to it during the debate.

[The Chair]

We will have an opportunity during the debate to include that should we so wish. Does any other Member want to ask a question?

[Mr Jenkin]

The answer to my question is that I believe they are and that there is no exclusion from the European Court of Justice. The European Defence Agency statute, established by article whatever it is, includes provision for qualified majority voting in a very substantial number of areas, which includes, as I will explain later, permanent structured co-operation and majority voting, from which we could be excluded or subject to qualified majority voting. These are serious potential developments. Does my hon Friend not understand the risk of participating in this at all?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

When considering this instrument, it is worth noting first that the document is dated 26 June 2014. That we are dealing with it at such a late stage is an indication of how poor our scrutiny arrangements are and how incapable we are as a Parliament at keeping up with developments in the European Union.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jenkin]

I am making absolutely no personal criticism of my hon. Friend, and I give way to him on that basis.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. The document was recommended for debate by the European Scrutiny Committee about a year ago. The coalition Government refused to send documents for debate, and a huge backlog built up. Much of that is now being cleared by this Government, and I hope that more work will be done. It was not a failure of our processes; I am afraid it was a failure of Her Majesty’s Government.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am very grateful for that information and I am sure the Committee is, too. I was about to say that this is the first occasion, apart from a Government statement after the 2013 Council of Ministers meeting, that we have debated the 2013 conclusions in any depth. That underlines a serious state of affairs.

[Mr Brazier]

I remind my hon. Friend that I started with an apology for the tardiness of the debate. To answer his earlier question, it is true that the EDA does operate, as he suggested, on a qualified majority vote basis. In matters that are deemed to be important for national sovereignty, however, any member can escalate the matter up to the Council of Ministers, where it must be agreed by unanimity. The practical effect is therefore not as he imagines.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

I appreciate that my hon. Friend has received that reassurance, but, as I will explain, it is not worth very much. The fundamental problem is that our Government like to pretend that the EU’s common security and defence policy is harmless intergovernmental co-operation that has no access to money or legal sanctions and is therefore a federalist paper tiger. The 2013 Council conclusions actually give the lie to that, and any Conservative Prime Minister should have been wholly opposed to them. To sign the UK up to the programme in the document is not just another step towards a Europe army, which has always been a dream of federalist nations such as Germany, but another blow to our already beleaguered defence industries and another nail in the NATO coffin, in order that continental defence industries should not be exposed to US competition.

Much of the 2013 conclusions appears to be the usual verbiage and high-flown rhetoric about the EU being a “global player” in defence and about the

“strong commitment to the further development of a credible and effective CSDP”.

The understatement:

“Defence budgets in Europe are constrained”

is a feeble attempt to mask the reality that member states, including the UK, are all cutting their defence budgets. The oft-repeated plea to “make use of synergies”—a common theme of such documents—to improve capabilities has so far proved a forlorn hope. The invocation of increasing the effectiveness, visibility and impact of CSDP is bound to fail.

It is almost entirely down to France and the United Kingdom that EU defence means anything at all. We work increasingly bilaterally with the French, and other operations are NATO operations under an EU flag. NATO remains far more significant because it has US backing, and its people at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe are practised at planning and generating force for multinational operations. However, NATO gets its first mention only as a “partner” in paragraph 6 of the 2013 conclusions alongside the UN, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the African Union—as though NATO were equivalent to the African Union. There is mention of

“strategic partners and partner countries”,

but it is telling that the EU cannot bring itself to name the United States of America, the one military entity that dominates the world and the sole guarantor of European security. That underlines the squeamishness, futility, parochialism and vanity of CSDP.

The potential to damage UK defence interests is in the detail. The call for an EU cyber-defence policy framework and for an EU maritime security strategy both involve the federalist EU Commission. Remember, the Commission is the EU’s most powerful legislative body, so, if the Commission is involved, that is anything but intergovernmental co-operation.

To agree to that is to agree to a threat to the independence of UK policy in those fields. The fact that the Council will also call for

“increased synergies between CSDP and Freedom/Security/Justice actors”

opens the door to legally binding defence commitments to

“tackle horizontal issues such as organized crime, including trafficking and smuggling of human beings, and terrorism”.

A lot of that is already firmly in in the Commission’s legislative purview. That is another compelling reason for the UK to exercise its Lisbon treaty opt-out from EU home and justice affairs, which unfortunately we spurned last year.

Finally, on military capability development, the EU intends utterly to eclipse NATO, backed by the two legally binding 2009 defence procurement directives that enhance the power of the European Defence Agency, which is becoming an embryo EU defence ministry. The EDA’s statute enables decisions to be taken by majority voting, and, where any single state can threaten a veto, a subset of member states can act unilaterally as a bloc in the name of the whole of the EU—that is what they call structure co-operation.

EU defence is not so much about defence—because, as we see, defence expenditure across the continent is declining—as it is about protectionism of continental defence industrial interests whose technology rather lags behind their US counterparts. The Council proposes support for remotely piloted aircraft systems—a squeamish name for what we call drones or unmanned aerial vehicles—air-to-air refuelling, satellite communication and cyber. In at least two of these areas, air-to-air refuelling and cyber, the UK is already supreme in the EU—we have, for example, GCHQ in Cheltenham—so why should we agree to the EU directing our policy? That is what this amounts to. For all those capabilities, US interoperability is essential for the UK, but there is nothing in these documents about co-operation with our closest ally, because EU defence is about excluding the US wherever possible. That is why NATO is not an acceptable vehicle for those who want European integration.

In the 2013 conclusions, we read that the Council

“invites the Commission (again), the European Investment Bank and the European Defence Agency to develop proposals for a pooled acquisition mechanism”,

which can only mean some kind of EU defence purchasing agency. It may not require much money to develop legal control over member states’ defence procurement programmes. How so? The proposals for

“strengthening Europe's defence industry”

are to be

“in full compliance with EU law”.

This is not intergovernmental. The Commission again is invited

“to set up a Preparatory Action on CSDP-related research”.

Finally,

“The European Defence Agency, in cooperation with the Commission (yet again), will prepare a roadmap for the development of defence industrial standards”

which is what we are looking at today, and

“develop a harmonized European military certification approach”.

Those are the key means by which the EU can obtain control over defence. One of the key purposes of NATO was to ensure transatlantic standards and certification to ensure interoperability. The EU is duplicating that role in order to create its own separate and distinct standards that are not compatible with our US counterparts.

Again, on this question of certification and standards there is no reference whatever to EU-US co-operation, which would make sense. That is because the EU wants standards and certification that will exclude US defence equipment from EU markets wherever possible. That is what EU defence policy is really about.

I am sorry to tell my hon. Friend the Minister that I shall not be voting to take note of this document and will vote against if the opportunity arises.

Defence Spending

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

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

May I first remark upon the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash)? He had wished to be here to support the motion but is attending the funeral of Sergeant Doug Lakey, who was awarded the military medal and was with my hon. Friend’s father, Captain Paul Cash, on the day he was killed in Normandy in July 1944.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and his colleagues on pinning their support for any future coalition Government to the 2% commitment, which is a significant benchmark. I hope that we will not be relying on his support after the general election, but I think that it sends a strong signal, both to people in my party and to others, so I commend him for that.

This debate is about the importance of defence. Every Member who has spoken seems to understand the importance of defence, but I hope that the House will forgive me if I go right back to basics and explain why defence is important. It is about what defence is expected to achieve: security. Security can be hard to define. It is best understood as a state of mind: how safe and secure people feel in carrying on with their daily life without undue anxiety about what might happen to them, to those on whom they depend, and to those who depend on them. It is also about providing security of expectation. We expect access to reliable supplies of clean water, food, energy and communications, which we all take for granted, and in the longer term we expect access to health, economic security, jobs, incomes and pensions, and education in order to strive for a secure future for the next generation.

It is true that military capability is just part of what we need in order to achieve true security. We want to shape the world for our own benefit and to advance democracy, human rights and free trade for the benefit of all humanity. We and our allies must therefore separately and together conduct campaigns to advance those ends. For the most part we want to use soft power—diplomacy, trade, aid and cultural links—to succeed in those campaigns. In a peaceful world, the exercise of soft power is the only acceptable way to conduct international relations.

During periods when it is less obvious how expensive military capability can be of much value, as was the case in the period immediately after the end of the cold war, it is tempting to believe that national or European defence is not about being prepared to repel invaders or protect from potential aggressors. The use of soft power can seem to be the only way to combat insurgencies driven by religious tensions or extremist ideologies, but there is another danger in that regard. Some offer soft power as an alternative to hard power, and that is particularly attractive due to the war-weary sentiment that pervades our politics today. Some even warn that using or threatening to use hard power—we heard this from my friend and Public Administration Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn)—undermines and discredits our commitment to the objectives that we Europeans wish to achieve in the world. That is a dangerous fallacy.

The lessons of history are very clear. We cannot enjoy a soft-power world unless we also have recourse to hard power when necessary. Central and eastern Europe were able to emerge from under Soviet communism and join the western family of democratic nations only because the west’s determined hard-power stance succeeded in facing down Russia during the cold war. Today, democratic nations must be ready and willing to deploy hard power to maintain global peace and security. The successful resolution of the 1990s Balkans crisis, which was not a humanitarian operation, proved that when NATO threatened a ground invasion in order to resolve the conflict.

Therefore, as we Europeans—I say “Europeans” because this spending problem is a European problem—conduct our global campaigns to promote peace, security and prosperity around the world, and we seek to do so by using our influence through trade, aid and diplomacy, we need to remember that global security and the rule of international law depend on our ability to defend them—in the last resort, by force, if necessary. The commitment to foreign aid, which eschews the national interest, is no more important an indication of the national will than our commitment to spend the NATO minimum of 2% of GDP on defence.

This concept of defence rests on the concept of deterrence, which has already been mentioned. It is a grave mistake to see defence merely as a collection of tools to be kept in a box that is taken out of the cupboard under the stairs only when something goes wrong, and is put away again when the job is done. Some like to see defence as a kind of insurance against worst-case scenarios. Britain’s nuclear deterrent is often described in that way, but the analogy is deeply misleading and dangerous, because it encourages a false belief that we can balance what we have to spend on defence against what we perceive to be the risks or threats. Not even the nuclear deterrent can buy national or European security on its own.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Is it not also the case that if someone belongs to a club, they have to pay the subscription? We are never allowed to cut the subscription we pay to the European Union, from which some of us do not think we get value, and now people are suggesting that we can cut our subscription to NATO, which is vital to our security.

[Mr Jenkin]

Yes, and it should not be forgotten that our subscription to the EU is also written into legislation, and that we are not allowed to change that. I am thinking of asking the Library to speculate on when our contribution to the European Union will overtake what we spend on defence.

The question is what role defence plays in shaping the kind of world we want. We need to possess and be able to deploy the capacity to discourage, or even to retaliate against, those who would disrupt that. Opponents of the maintenance of our minimum nuclear deterrent systems in the UK and France often assert that they are a waste of money “because they are never used”. Actually, our nuclear deterrent is used every hour of every day of every year. All that we require potential adversaries to know is that we can and might use it, if circumstances arose that would make that expedient. That is how we influence the global strategic environment.

The same applies by degrees to all military capabilities that nations, or groups of nations, possess that can inflict harm or disadvantage on adversaries who threaten our interests or global security. The mere possession of military capability is not a threat to international security. The lack of it on our part, in the face of those who do have it and have the intention of using it, is the threat we confront today. Money spent on our capability is not wasted if we never use it. It is an indication of our will—our determination to succeed in our aims of promoting international security and the rule of international law. We need military capability in order to be peacekeepers. What we possess changes how potential adversaries perceive us because of what we can or might do in response.

Defence is not just about having the armed forces to match the particular military threats that we can see or imagine. Defence policy is about how we decide what military capability we need to possess in order to help shape the world to be more as we want it to be, rather than subject to the will of those who seek to take unfair advantage, or to disrupt that. These days, defence policy extends beyond the traditional domains of land, sea and air, as was so ably described by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). In the globalised and technological world of today, we need to think of defence in wider domains such as economics, trade, aid, cyberspace, technology, industry, media, communications and even politics, and throughout the whole sphere of global society.

For each nation to be effective in international statecraft, we need to act collectively where we can, which is why we Europeans must be prepared to commit national resources to defence, to harness our potential together, and to join with other global allies, or we will find that we have failed to provide for our own security.

That brings me to the absolute primacy of NATO. The idea of a happy new world order, which some still seem to believe we can enjoy, is disappearing before our eyes. That is evident from the failure on a spectacular scale in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the emergence of a more Soviet-style leadership in Russia. Putin pursued a brutally repressive war in Chechnya and then tested his revived military capability in the invasion of Georgia. The subsequent diplomatic stand-off was resolved only when President Sarkozy of France made a unilateral visit to Moscow and effectively conceded permanent Russian annexation of the Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Perhaps that led to his later boldness. We have seen the Arab uprising lead to chaos in the middle east, not the spreading of democracy that we had hoped for.

It is clear that we live in a world where soft power must still be sustained by hard power. We will need to continue to live up to the 2% commitment that all NATO members agreed to at the summit in Wales. If we will not do that, which countries will we have to rely on for our security and for the future of world peace, stability, freedom and democracy around the world?

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Service Personnel (Ukraine)

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

There is a well-established convention that if we were engaged in offensive military operations in a country we would of course come to the House, as we did last September when we obtained the authority of the House to carry out air strikes in Iraq. This, however, is not a military operation. We are providing trainers and advisers to help the armed forces of Ukraine better to defend themselves and to help to reduce the very high number of fatalities and casualties that they are suffering.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lesson of the cold war is that we secure peace through strength? I very much welcome this intervention, but we in the west must decide whether we are going to indicate our resolve to deter Russian aggression or not. Will he remind our American allies, whom I very much welcome as part of this initiative, that it was the sailing of their sixth fleet into the Black sea that stopped the invasion of Georgia in its tracks? When are the Americans going to come to this initiative with force?

[Michael Fallon]

I am looking forward to discussing this with the new American Secretary of Defence, Ash Carter, whose appointment I hope the whole House will welcome. I say to my hon. Friend that we cannot simply leave the defence of our continent to the Americans. They are involved in the joint commission with Ukraine, alongside Canada and ourselves, but it is also important for NATO to have the resolve to defend its own borders. That is why I hope that my hon. Friend welcomes the commitments made at the NATO summit, which we now need to follow through.