Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Bob Ainsworth and Ian Davidson

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ainsworth]

We carried out a strategic defence review in 1998; we updated it through the new chapter and the White Paper. I became Secretary of State in the late summer of 2009. We committed ourselves to a strategic defence review in exactly the same way as the Conservative party did. We would have been carrying out a strategic defence review in exactly the same way as the Government are. We would be confronting the same difficulties. We would try to be as open and inclusive as we possibly could. I genuinely believe that defence is more than a simple party interest and that it ought to expand beyond that.

[Mr Davidson]

Surely, the Opposition spokesman would agree that we would not have carried out the defence review in exactly the same way, since he and his colleagues were much more supportive of the aircraft carrier contract than some in the Government are.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I do not think we will get an answer on specific capabilities from the Defence Secretary—we have not got many answers from him at this stage—and I suppose that that is understandable. I did not expect him to come to the House and be able to tell us today what his conclusions will be. I am asking him—I think this is perfectly reasonable—to share his emerging thinking with the House and not to think that he can present a fait accompli at the end of the day, because that would make things a lot worse.

I want to raise two points of contention. First, the Government announced, and the Prime Minister repeated this in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday, that £67 million has been applied to doubling the number of improvised explosive device teams. As we applied £150 million to the IED capability in Afghanistan a few months ago and that doubled the IED teams, I wonder how the new Government have managed to double them yet again with only £67 million. We should not be spinning about that; we ought to be clear. I hope we will hear some explanation when the Minister winds up about exactly what that £67 million has bought. Are they re-announcing the doubling that took place under the previous Government, or have they managed by some means or another to redouble an already doubled capability for about half the cost? That really would be magic money indeed.

Secondly, I do not believe that the manner in which the impending resignation of the Chief of the Defence Staff was dealt with was in any way appropriate. To suggest that he is in some way responsible, as it was put, for past failures in Afghanistan or was too close to Labour is quite a sad thing for anyone to have suggested. The existing Chief of the Defence Staff is a man who, as far as I am aware, believes in democratic control. He therefore believes that Ministers ought to take decisions and that commanders ought to give advice. If people detract from that, they do themselves no favours whatsoever.