Foreign Affairs and Defence

Bob Ainsworth Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

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

First, I pay tribute to our armed forces, particularly those stationed in many parts of the world as they protect our country and our national interests. They are magnificent people, and it was my great honour to serve them as Secretary of State for Defence and, before that, as Minister for the Armed Forces. I want especially to pay tribute to those in Afghanistan, most particularly those who have made the ultimate sacrifice since the House last met. We must never forget them.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) on his appointment; he now has the privilege but also the duty to do all he can for the defence of our country and the well-being of our armed forces. I hope that he will be able to face the significant challenges of the period ahead. In my view, he faces three overriding tasks. To the extent that he carries those out honourably and in the national interest, he will receive our backing and support.

First, the right hon. Gentleman needs to conduct a strategic defence review, as announced in the Gracious Speech. Secondly, he must take forward and consolidate the progress achieved so far in Afghanistan. Thirdly, he must ensure that he looks after the welfare of our armed forces community. To use the shorthand that has now gone into common usage, he needs to honour the military covenant.

Is the strategic defence review under way, as we have read in the press? The Government are falling into bad habits so soon. Is there going to be an open debate on the issues during the process? Will the Government set up real mechanisms to ensure that those beyond the Government will be able to contribute? The right hon. Gentleman was complimentary about the manner in which I conducted the Green Paper process, and I hope that he will be as inclusive on the strategic defence review itself.

Despite claiming that the SDR will be security-led, the right hon. Gentleman will not be able to exclude the Treasury, as the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), who chaired the Defence Committee, said. I suggest to the Secretary of State for Defence that it is in his interests and those of the nation to include others. After all, he has repeatedly told the British people that the British Government are fighting a war on a peacetime budget. He must expect to be judged on the outcome that he achieves. Having said that the Army is too small, that the number of Navy ships has been reduced to the point of putting the nation in danger, and having criticised the cutbacks at RAF Cottesmore and the gapping of the Nimrod capability, he has set himself quite a task.

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

There is not only the Green Paper exercise, in which the former Secretary of State was kind enough to invite me to participate, but the example of Labour’s defence review following the 1997 election, led by George—now Lord—Robertson, and in which the public were invited to participate effectively.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I am inviting my successor to be as open and inclusive as possible and to try to capture a broad spectrum of opinion in the country as he does his business on the strategic defence review.

What on earth went on last week on the issue of Afghanistan? The Defence Secretary was briefing the press that

“We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country.”

That has been mentioned by many this afternoon. At the same time, the Secretary of State for International Development was making it clear that development, including education, was absolutely crucial. If the Secretaries of State travel on the same plane, they must be able to speak to one another. It is not as though either was a Liberal Democrat—where was the barrier to a conversation? Did the Foreign Secretary have to knock the Secretaries of States’ heads together?

Can the Defence Secretary confirm that, despite what he was trying to spin out in the newspapers, he has no new strategy in Afghanistan and that he is following the coalition strategy, as we were? If not, he should spell out his new strategy to the House so that he can be questioned on it. He should also let ISAF’s commander, General McChrystal, know that he has a new plan and share it with him.

Will the Secretary of State tell us—if not now, perhaps he could write—what equipment he is going to provide for our troops over and above what had already been ordered by the Labour Government? He will want to do this, having been so vociferous in telling the nation how we were betraying the troops in Afghanistan, so I invite him to do so. How many additional helicopters and protected vehicles does he plan to buy? How will he square that with his silly attempts to say that we were signing irresponsible contracts in the last months of the Government? I leave it to him to square that argument. However, if he is going to make that allegation, I invite him to say specifically which contracts we should not have signed and which contracts should not go ahead.

On the talked-about move to Kandahar, let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that I was an extreme sceptic. We have learned many things in Helmand, and surely now is the time to consolidate and to finish the job. I hope that unless there are overwhelming, genuine military reasons to do otherwise, he will resist the calls to pull up stumps and move elsewhere.

I turn to the issue of forces welfare. I hope that the Secretary of State can accept that great strides were made in the past few years. I know that he felt the need, as did many of his colleagues, to claim that we had broken the military covenant. He knows, however, that I made great efforts through the service personnel Command Paper, and that the Labour Government improved the lot of our servicemen and women through the introduction of improvements to the compensation scheme and the investment that we made in service accommodation. Can he assure us that there will be no rowing back from the improvements that we introduced, and detail the improvements that he plans to make himself? I congratulate him on increasing the operational allowance, but having said all that he has, he will need to do more than that.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman—genuinely, because I personally think it was the right thing to do—to think about legislating for a service charter, as we planned to do, in order to enshrine the rights of service personnel in law? When I talk to service people—I am thinking most particularly of those who have been injured in the service of our country—they are not necessarily worried about the treatment that they are getting now but about what will happen to them in 10 years’ time, when the caravan has moved on, they are getting older, and they are still living with their injuries. They want to know that the commitment that we have made in the past couple of years will endure and see them through for the rest of their lives.

I cannot cover all the many fine speeches that have been made—maiden speeches and contributions by existing Members—but I will try to mention one or two in the time available to me. I commiserate with the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who described himself as collateral damage. He demolished very well his new-found friends’ deterrent policy. Let me combine that with the comments that were made by the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), who told the House that many people were deceived by the Liberal Democrats’ policy, and ask him to reflect on whether the policy really was ridiculous or whether it was deceptive.

I wish to mention, as so many others have, the speech of the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), and I ask him to continue to do what he did so well and not to lose that edge over time. He can come into the House and talk to us and the nation, and get us to feel what it is like to serve, suffer and conquer fear as only someone who has had service can. He can bring something to the House in doing that, and I hope that he never loses the ability to do so.

I can see that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) is going to be a real champion of the dockyard and our defence industrial base. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) continues to be a rock and make the same speeches as he has for a generation and more. Governments come and Governments go, but the hon. Gentleman is still here, still making the same speech and still hoping that people are listening to him.

I was able to visit the constituency of my new hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) during the election campaign and see what I would describe as the amazing cathedral of engineering skill that we have at Barrow. He is concerned that if we ever lose that skill, it will be extremely difficult to replace and our ability to produce nuclear submarines will be lost, potentially for ever. I hope that we can hang on to it. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) expressed her concern that the consolidation of amphibious capability, which I believe is very sensible, should go ahead.

The hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) was uncharacteristically partisan in some of his comments. He cannot blame the Government for operations that his own party supported just as much. If his speech was a bid for a particular job, he himself needs to invest in stealth capability.

The new Government will find that as an Opposition, we are sincere in our support for our armed forces and what they are doing on our behalf. I will throw the new Secretary of State’s past words back at him in future, as I have today, and we will hold this Tory-led Government to account. However, I give him and the House my assurance and that of my hon. Friends that we will not play politics with the dedicated work of the men and women of our armed forces. They deserve, and they will receive, the support of Members on the Labour side of the House.