Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Bob Ainsworth

Thursday 4th November 2010 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames). I echo his tribute to our armed forces—not just the fallen, but all of them. I spent two years as Minister for the Armed Forces and one as Secretary of State for Defence during a period when we were not only suffering the greatest losses of modern times, but fighting at the highest level of capability that we have had to achieve recently, and showing what our armed forces were capable of. That impressed on me what amazing people they are: they are worthy of our wholehearted support.

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid Sussex for many other reasons. As he said, he was very helpful when I was producing a Green Paper while I was a Minister, and his commitment to the armed forces is recognised by nearly everyone. I do not think it was entirely recognised by the sergeant-major who was responsible for his training at Sandhurst, if all the stories that he has told me are true, but everyone else recognises it—and, of course, his ancestry rivals my own. [Laughter.]

My admiration for the current Secretary of State is growing by the minute. I have to say that he has displayed huge capability in the political field, both in the House today and elsewhere. In the political arena, he is emulating some of the skills displayed by the Duke of Wellington, who used to hide his horses on reverse slopes and show his strength where he felt weakest. The Secretary of State has done the same this afternoon: he has lectured us about strategy—he has used the phrases of the lecture circuit—because he knows jolly well that what has been presented to the nation in the last few weeks is far from a strategy. What we have is an SPSR, or “seriously pretend spending review”, not a strategic security review. I think the Secretary of State knows that, but he does his very best to hide it, and he will do his very best to work within it. He has fought his corner hard in Government, and he is to be respected for that.

However, we never quite received an answer from the Secretary of State to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). He talked a great deal about how we were joining our commitment to Afghanistan with the growing capability of the Afghan national security forces. The right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Select Committee, tried to help him by telling us again what we all know—how long we have been in Afghanistan—but the question was very simple: did the Prime Minister consult the Secretary of State before he announced the 2015 withdrawal date for our combat mission in Afghanistan?

Answer came there none, but we know what the answer is. The Prime Minister did not consult the Secretary of State. He did not consult his Defence Secretary, he did not consult his Foreign Secretary, and he did not consult his Chief of the Defence Staff. We know whom the Prime Minister consulted before he made that decision: he consulted the Deputy Prime Minister. This was a political decision, made for political reasons. We have more than 9,000 troops in theatre in Afghanistan, facing an enemy whose main tactic is to wait until we tire and then to inherit a victory, but for political reasons, and no others, the Prime Minister of this country announced an end date for our combat mission, playing into the hands of the enemy by transferring the pressure from the Taliban to the Afghan Government.

I am not saying that there is not a huge need for pressure on the Afghan Government. The single weakest point of the campaign of the international security assistance force in Afghanistan lies in the weaknesses and corruption of its Government, and if we fail to put that right, the mission will most certainly fail. But the decision to remove the pressure on the main enemy for domestic political reasons without even consulting the Defence Secretary, the Foreign Secretary or the Chief of the Defence Staff was astonishing.

[Mr Jenkin]

I have great respect for the way in which the right hon. Gentleman conducted himself as Defence Secretary in very difficult circumstances, but I really do think that he is talking complete rubbish about this. When I last visited Afghanistan, the Americans had already indicated that they were minded to withdraw, and the effect of that was to galvanise the Afghan political process. The stalemate in the Afghan political process has been the main obstacle to progress in Afghanistan. I believe that the Prime Minister made the right announcement, and I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence was properly consulted.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I have the greatest respect for the hon. Gentleman as well. I know that he follows these issues, and takes them very seriously. As I have said, there is a need for pressure on the Afghan Government—I do not doubt that—but let us not pretend that the British Government only went as far as the American Government had gone. What the American President said in autumn 2009—albeit unfortunately taking a long time to say it—was that by 2011 there would be a draw-down of the additional troops put into Afghanistan. He did not say there would be a withdrawal and an end to the combat mission. It was the British Prime Minister who said that, and as he is the leader of the nation providing the second largest troop contribution, that announcement was by no means insignificant in respect of the ISAF contingent.

The British Prime Minister named a date for the total end of the combat mission for party political reasons. We can establish that by considering the people he consulted as against those he failed to consult. If the reasons for the announcement had been to do with the operational mission, he would have consulted the Defence and Foreign Secretaries and the Chief of the Defence Staff, but as both the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and I know, the person he consulted was the Deputy Prime Minister.

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[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful for the question, but I will continue. [Interruption.] With respect, that was not the purpose of the Committee’s report. We were not trying to write a national strategy; we were simply trying to advertise the fact that the capacity for developing a coherent national strategy does not exist.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is on to something, and I know that a number of people are examining his report. Why does he think that we as a political class have shrunk to pragmatic reactions, rather than daring ones? Does he think politicians would be rewarded or punished if they dared to be strategic?

[Mr Jenkin]

The right hon. Gentleman asks an interesting question, which has been raised with me before. There are two reasons why politicians fear such a challenge. The first is that politicians who are busy running their Departments do not like people running into their offices with contrary ideas and imperatives. The other reason is that if they ask for alternatives to be developed, they say, “Whatever you do, don’t put it on to a piece of paper and don’t e-mail it to anybody, in case it leaks out.”

We are embarked on a deficit reduction programme that depends on a certain economic out-turn. I just hope that the Treasury has run through the alternative plans B, C and D, in case things do not turn out as we expect. The problem is that we have got into the habit of thinking in closed systems. Economists in particular work in mathematical equations and like tame, predictable problems. Economics is all about prediction and certainty, with the intention of being vindicated by what happens. We live in a world in which problems are not tame but wicked and unpredictable. As we face greater and greater global challenges, we must be more prepared for the unpredictability of the global security, economic and geopolitical environments. We therefore need the capacity for strategy.

I shall give a brief example. I gather that after the global banking crisis started, Her Majesty the Queen asked how nobody had seen that it would happen, given that it was so big. The answer is that one body did foresee a global banking collapse being a major security threat to the UK. It was the advanced research and assessment group, based at Shrivenham, and I am afraid that in March the right hon. Member for Coventry North East as Defence Secretary closed it down, to save £1 million. [Interruption.] It was such a small cut, he did not even realise it was being made. I have no doubt it did not cross his desk. It was shut down because it had made enemies by telling truth to power, and that is the capacity that needs to exist in Whitehall.