Migrant Crossings: Role of the Military
Bob Stewart Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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James Heappey
In answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that there may be some disagreement between Departments, I can only reflect that my great friends the Under-Secretaries of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friends the Members for Corby (Tom Pursglove) and for Torbay (Kevin Foster), work with me all the time, not just on this matter but on Op Pitting and all sorts of other issues where Home Office and MOD interests align. The right hon. Gentleman is right to note that I was clear that Border Force is developing a tactic. It may well be that the commander is comfortable with that tactic being employed, and there is a difference between the reason why the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines will not deploy that tactic and the reason why Border Force may. Border Force has the appropriate vessels, potentially, to do so safely; the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines do not.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Does the Minister consider that use of the Royal Navy will reduce the number of migrants who land in the United Kingdom?
James Heappey
I believe that it could, as part of a wider system that is under development.
Ukraine
Bob Stewart Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Wallace
The United Kingdom will always work with its allies to do what it can for its own and its allies’ security. We will always keep all options open, but I have to be honest: Russia has the biggest armed forces in Europe and Ukraine is not a member of NATO. In that environment, it would be holding out false hope to say that British armed forces would unilaterally go to join forces alongside the Ukrainians. That is why we are putting all the effort into helping the Ukrainians to help themselves, the sanctions package and diplomatic efforts.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
How can we reach out to the Russian people and tell them that NATO is a defensive alliance, so they do not have to swallow wholesale the Putin narrative that we are aggressive and trying to take over Russia?
Mr Wallace
First, as the international community we have to be consistent in that messaging. The other message, as my hon. Friend will know, is that Russian mothers and fathers do not want to see their sons and daughters come back as they did in the first Chechnya war. We should remind them that this will not be cost-free on either side, and it is not the way forward. However, we do that multilaterally together, both as NATO and as the international community, and we keep that messaging going all the way through. We do not detract or let them distract with false narratives.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bob Stewart Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Leo Docherty
When considering armed forces pay, it is very important to look at it in the round. Service personnel benefit from subsidised food and accommodation, a fantastic non-contributory pension, and allowances on top of basic pay. If I may say, it is a little bit rich getting lessons on armed forces pay from the SNP, given that it has hiked tax on service personnel in Scotland to the tune of £580 per person. It is just as well that the Ministry of Defence is making up the difference.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I am very sad about the loss of Jack. I had known him since we both served together—him for the unions, me for the military—in Northern Ireland a long time ago.
Private soldiers, able seamen and aircraftsmen, after six months’ training and in accordance with the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body, get roughly £3,000 to £4,000 less than a policeman who is also trained for about six months. That seems weird and I ask the Minister if he might slightly account for that.
Leo Docherty
As I said, we have to take note of the fact that service personnel benefit very significantly from subsidised food and accommodation, a non-contributory pension and allowances. Many young soldiers are also taking advantage of the opportunity to get on to the property ladder through the Forces Help to Buy scheme, which has been a great success.
Loss of Secret Documents
Bob Stewart Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Personally, I am rather saddened that the BBC saw fit to publish information that was secret, rather than pass it straight to the police or refer it to the Ministry of Defence. I think that reflects poorly on the BBC, which is, after all, a public service broadcaster. In the past it was normal practice for anyone in the MOD carrying restricted, classified or sensitive documents out of a secure location to do so in an approved briefcase, which was often manacled to the carrier’s wrist. Have such arrangements stopped now?
Jeremy Quin
As I mentioned to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), there are policies and procedures in place as to how documents can be safely taken out of the Department on the rare occasions when that is necessary. I think it is for the investigation to work through whether those procedures were followed in this instance and whether those procedures need to be reformed or improved for the future.
UK Defence Spending
Bob Stewart Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Ellwood
The hon. Gentleman is correct in the sense that we are advancing into new terrain: even when it comes to a cyber-attack, it is unclear whether or not it is an article 5 breach. We are building resilience and capabilities, but the rules-based order, international institutions and legislation have yet to keep up. That should not prevent us from making sure—as the MOD is rightly doing—that our mission is protected as we become increasingly vulnerable and ever more reliant on the movement of data.
To go back to the point about reducing our armed forces and the footprint of our manpower, the ability to seize and hold ground, separate warring factions, deliver humanitarian aid, assist civil authorities with tasks such as tackling covid-19, win over hearts and minds, restore law and order, respond to natural disasters and carry out countless other diverse tasks—that requires people. It requires professionals—it requires our soldiers, sailors and air personnel. It is wrong to reduce those numbers.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I entirely agree with what my right hon. Friend has said. We have not fought a high-intensity war since the second world war—maybe we did in Korea—but we have operation after operation, and what we need is manpower. We have just cut it by 10,000, and I can tell hon. Members that, having commanded soldiers on the ground in peacekeeping or peacemaking, we have cut off our nose to spite our face. We require our boots on the ground. We require soldiers. I entirely endorse what my right hon. Friend has said. We are cutting our Army by 10,000 and that is a mistake.
Mr Ellwood
My right hon. and gallant Friend makes a very powerful point. I know that the Ministers on the Front Bench are conscious of this issue. One day, I would like to learn of the algorithm—what it was—that determined the cut of 9,500. Perhaps one day we will read the memoirs of the Ministers on the Front Bench and learn and be better aware.
For the moment, the cuts have another significance, because they affect our upstream engagement: our ability to strengthen our security bonds with allies and partners. I know that the Armed Forces Minister is conscious of the value of the bond that we develop with nations—Commonwealth partners and so forth—because of the professionalism of our armed forces. Being able to share ideas, training and so forth is absolutely critical. However, the integrated review fails to address the biggest strategic threat posed by China. It does not recognise how China is using its soft power—its one belt, one road programme—to gift military and telecoms equipment to countries across the world and effectively nudge us out of favoured nation status. That is happening with Commonwealth countries in Africa and the Caribbean. We lose our soft power and prosperity links.
China is ensnaring more and more countries in its sphere of influence. We are seeing a bipolar world emerge. For me, that is the face of the next cold war, and that is what we need to address. That is exactly why we should be increasing our global presence, not decreasing it or limiting our ability to increase it by reducing our numbers.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I think that any members of the armed forces watching this debate would be encouraged by the seriousness with which we take this issue. I thank the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for a tour de force in laying out this whole issue. Sitting where I do and hearing the voices behind me, I am reminded of being on the school bus in the second year when the big boys who made the noise were at the back. I therefore rise to my feet with slight trepidation.
As for the contribution of the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), I do not think I have heard a more succinct definition of what defence is all about since I have been here—although my parents are no longer with us, I believe I almost hear their cheering from far away. My father served in the 14th Army and fought against a totalitarian regime, the Japanese. My mother told me she had been in the Foreign Office and it was only when certain books were published that I realised that she had worked in a large house near Milton Keynes, although she never told me anything about the work she did there. That generation understood what the defence of the realm is all about, so the right hon. Gentleman has put it very well for us today.
I want to go on record, as have others, in thanking the armed forces for their work during the pandemic. In my far-flung constituency they played their part, and it was much appreciated by local people. I talked to some of the personnel who helped out and it was so encouraging to hear that they appreciated doing something different, it had made their lives more interesting and they felt that they were helping to defeat the unseen enemy of the virus.
The point has been made again and again— I apologise for repeating myself—about buying British. If we can, we always should, because, as I said in an intervention, the intellectual knowledge—the final clever stuff, the last bits—about the piece of kit will always remain with the country or the consortium that made it. With the best will in the world, we will never be told everything about the F-35; we will never know every little bit about it. That is why we must design and build in this country if we humanly can. This is about employing people, about know-how and, at the end of the day, about getting the best, but made in Britain.
I regret that I am repeating something I said yesterday, but a further point is that this is about boots on the ground, as the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said. Make no mistake, recruitment is beginning to be hit, and that is not what we want to happen at all. The general public are not stupid. They realise the importance of protecting ourselves, and they know that cutting the Army by 10,000 men and women is not a move in the right direction.
Bob Stewart
I should like to support my good friend’s comments. When I joined the Army, my battalion was 750-strong. When I commanded that battalion, it had 525 personnel. We now have one battalion in the Army that apparently has 170 people, yet it is still called a battalion. We must beware when people say we have a particular amount of battalions. We may have that amount of battalions, but we do not have the numbers of men and women who operated those battalions when they were properly at strength.
Carrier Strike Group Deployment
Bob Stewart Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Wallace
One of the lessons from the pandemic is that joined-up working and burden sharing is the key, whether that is better integration internally with devolved Administrations and local authorities or internationally. The international lesson is that we have to be better at working together in our international organisations—the UN, the World Health Organisation, NATO—all of which are incredibly important. What we are seeing right now with India is an international response, with the United Kingdom and the United States sending oxygen compressors and ventilators. We will work together to deliver that response. That is the lesson: partnerships and solidarity win the day.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
May I point out that I am the chair of the British-Taiwanese all-party parliamentary group? To supplement what my right hon. and gallant Friend, and very good friend, the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) mentioned in his question, I am really saddened that we are, in a way, capitulating to the neo-colonialism of China that is taking over islands in the South China sea, occupying them and militarising them against international law, and yet we seem not to be able to join our friends from Taiwan by letting their ships join this taskforce or, indeed, by visiting Taipei. I realise that it is probably a bit late, but I feel quite strongly that we may well have to revise how we tackle the matter of Chinese aggression in the South China sea.
Mr Wallace
I hear my right hon. Friend, and we are all concerned when the rules-based system is tested in the way that it is and when aggressive exercising or deployments happen, as we have also seen in Ukraine. That is no good for anybody and does not resolve any of the issues. The carrier group will be sailing in lots of parts of the Pacific that are contentious. We will be in the Philippine sea, the South China sea and, I think, the East China sea, and making sure that we are in parts of the world where there are currently contentious issues. I do not think that we can be everywhere, but we will be making the point—we will be exercising with US carriers—and we have been very clear in our relationship with China, whether that is dealing with Hong Kong or others, that we believe that respect for human rights and international law is incredibly important, and we will uphold it.
Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Historical Inequalities Report
Bob Stewart Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Wallace
I thank the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) for both his tone and his support for the whole House’s efforts. Obviously, it was the almost single-handed drive of the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) that got this higher up the agenda, even though, as I think he rightly credits himself, some of the academics and the programme makers made a step change in that. I want to repeat my regret that it has taken so long. None of us were here in the 1920s, but many of us have been here for the last 30, 40 or 50 years.
It is a deep point of regret for me that, in my own education, what I was taught of the first world war predominately boiled down to the Somme and poets, with very little about the contribution from the Commonwealth countries and the wider—at the time—British empire. As I go around the world as Defence Secretary, it is remarkable to be reminded of those contributions. In some parts of the world, there are graves and places to commemorate them. I went to my own father’s base, where he fought during the Malayan emergency—now Malaysia—to see the Gurkha cemetery. Men died both to defeat communism and protect Malaysia, but also on behalf of Britain, right up until the early 1970s. I think it is important to remember that we have excluded a lot of that from our children’s education, and we absolutely must rectify that.
To address the points of the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, I am absolutely happy to provide regular updates either in written form in the Library or indeed, on occasion, to come to the House to make a statement of update on progress. As the report itself says, some of these recommendations can be quickly delivered, and some will take time. For example, the investigation into the second world war commemoration and everything else is ongoing. I will make sure that the commission knows not only that it has my support, but that we will hold it to account in delivering that. I will seek regular quarterly updates from the commission on the progress it makes, and in turn update the House.
On how we will communicate with and make sure we work with Commonwealth countries, this is not just about an audience here, but about all the people in those countries. Only recently, I was talking to my Kenyan counterpart—I visited Kenya again and, indeed, visited Somalia—and it is important both that the people there understand the sacrifice of their fellow citizens and that we honour them as well.
As we speak, our defence attaché network, ambassadors and other officials around the world are communicating the report to host countries. With some of them we engaged earlier—with countries such as Kenya, for example—and we have already been working on memorials and things we can do together. We have been making sure that they understand the contents of this report, and we will continue to use that network.
As for funding and future steps, I am absolutely open to all suggestions about what more we can do for education and for commemoration. At the moment, the commission says that it is satisfied that it has the budget, but I do not rule out looking at more funding for it if that is required. Its current income is £52 million, with a range of Commonwealth countries contributing to the funding, but I am not ruling that out, and I would be open to sensible suggestions that make the difference.
As I said, I will continue to update the House and make sure that we can hold the commission to account and that the House can hold me to account in my position as chair of that commission. We should take this as the start point, not the end.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
On 15 June 1955, a small force commanded by RAF Regiment officers, including my father, crawled into the Wadi Hatib in Aden protectorate. They were ambushed. The commanding officer was killed. Another British officer was killed, and six Arab soldiers were killed. My father took over command. The six Arab soldiers are unknown, except the Arab officer; he got a posthumous Military Cross, as did the commanding officer and my father. There is no record of the other five Arab soldiers who gave their lives for this country. So I entirely endorse the recommendations and conclusions of the CWGC report. Mindful of the fact that we do not pay any attention to graves from the Boer war or wars before 1900—they are just left to go to rack and ruin—how long will we be able to sustain the brilliant efforts of the commission to maintain graves from the second world war onwards?
Strength of the UK’s Armed Forces
Bob Stewart Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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James Heappey
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right that Northern Ireland is a rich recruiting ground for people wanting to serve in our armed forces, and especially our reserve. The reserve has an important part to play in the plans the Army, Navy and Air Force have for the future, and I have every expectation that we will be able to extend increased opportunity to Northern Ireland. The detail of that has yet to be confirmed, but I hope that within the next couple of months the hon. Gentleman will get a more detailed answer to his question.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
The Minister has outlined a concept predicated on the armed forces fighting an all-out war—a war where no holds are barred and we use everything. I get that; I understand grey-zone thinking—I am a strategist, too; I read it in great detail at university. However, for 70 years we have never fought anything like such a war; instead, we have had limited operations, we have had counter-insurgency operations, and we have had peacekeeping and peace- making, and this Government are preparing to cut the very people—the lifeblood—that carries out such operations, and that really worries me.
James Heappey
I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention, but I do not agree with his analysis. In this part of my speech I am setting out the conventional war-fighting capabilities because the shadow Secretary of State set out a very pessimistic view of what they would be, but the reality is that the key change being made through the integrated review and Defence Command Paper is to enhance the capabilities my right hon. Friend rightly stresses will be in most demand as we address the challenges of tomorrow, and they are the ones that exist below the threshold of conflict. If he will indulge me, in a couple of minutes he will hear some of the things that I think might answer his question in more detail.
That is why we are investing heavily in the national cyber force, bringing together the resources of the Ministry of Defence and the intelligence community to deceive, degrade, deny, disrupt and destroy targets in and through cyber-space. It is also why we have established a new space command that will enhance our military surveillance and communication capabilities from space, assist in the co-ordination of commercial space operations and lead the development of new low and high orbit capabilities.
Moreover, we know that the threats to UK interests, both in space and in cyberspace, are not just from ones and zeroes. Our adversaries are investing in capabilities that put our undersea fibre-optic cables and our satellites at physical risk as well, so we need the ability to protect and defend our interests in the depths of the oceans and in the heights of space.
Nor are we alone in seeking to modernise. Our adversaries as well as our allies are making rapid headway, and some of the most cutting-edge capabilities are now commercially available, meaning that the highest grade technology is no longer the preserve of the best resourced militaries. So we are investing to stay ahead of the curve and recover our technological edge, putting aside at least £6.6 billion for research and development to supercharge innovation in the next generation of disruptive capabilities, from directed energy weapons to swarming drones.
But it is not just about what you’ve got; it is what you do with it. I have already set out the vision of the integrated operating concept, and over the next year or two the Ministry of Defence will be expanding our forward presence around the world as we shift from a contingent force waiting for the fight to one that operates and competes constantly. In the land domain, some of our most effective work is with small specialised infantry teams developing the capacity of partner forces in the parts of the world that cause us concern. We are reinforcing that success through the creation of the special operations-capable rangers and thus doubling the size of our partnering force. Our fighting brigades, meanwhile, will move to higher readiness so that they can deploy and operate more quickly. They will also gain capabilities that allow them to engage their enemy at greater range, thus reflecting the lessons on close combat learned from recent conflicts in northern Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I will endeavour not to be cut off.
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, which has been very interesting. It is actually a very thoughtful motion that we are considering—much more so than some of the other Opposition day motions we have been used to considering of late. Maybe that is why it has had such a sympathetic hearing from so many of my hon. Friends. We only have to look at what is happening on the Ukrainian border to see that even today, despite all the advancements that we have in technology, mass still matters.
Yet I cannot support the motion, primarily because of the very last sentence where it talks about the Government’s plans to reduce the capability of the armed forces. Unfortunately, that is simply not true. They are reducing the size—the overall manpower—of the armed forces but they are not reducing the capability. In fact, the £24.1 billion investment—the biggest increase in defence spending since the cold war—should be welcomed. The investment in new technologies and in accommodation, supporting forces’ families, is also something that we should all welcome. It is especially welcome in Scotland, where the review and settlement cement the armed forces footprint north of the border, guaranteeing the presence of the armed forces on the Clyde, at Lossiemouth and elsewhere across the country, investing in our shipyards by placing orders for 20 warships to be built on the Clyde, and providing jobs across the country in our world-leading defence industry sector at companies such as Leonardo in Edinburgh, which is providing the UK-led future combat air system.
I thank the Opposition for putting forward a very thoughtful motion. This has indeed been a very interesting debate with good contributions from all sides. However, because of the simple truth that we are not reducing the capability of the armed forces, I cannot—
Bob Stewart
I am sorry to have to disagree with my very good friend. We are reducing the capability of our armed forces. We are reducing their capability to do peacekeeping, limited operations, counter-insurgency and peacemaking. We have not got the men to do it. That is what we are doing.
Andrew Bowie
I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend—my very good friend—for his intervention. I would never seek to disagree with him on matters of defence, but on this issue, although not wrong, I think that the investment that we are making in technology will allow this country to be at the forefront of expanding our capabilities as a country in doing all the things that he spoke about, which we are very proud that our armed forces do for us and for our allies around the world. That is why I cannot support this motion.
James Sunderland (Bracknell) (Con)
It is a great privilege to speak in this key debate, Mr Deputy Speaker, although the concept of strength of the armed forces happens to be a misnomer. First, military force will only ever be as good as the way in which it is deployed. The long asymmetric campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, were indicative of attrition, force protection and technology, more so than outright military power, but times have changed, even over this short period, and as the integrated review has made clear, we are now fighting in an era of “persistent engagement” against multiple threats, on multiple fronts and in new domains. It might be that conventional force, far from being the historical solution it was, is now just a solution.
Secondly, the word “strength” is in itself confusing. It is often used to describe disposition or size, so I would agree with the Opposition’s argument that our UK armed forces have shrunk, but that ignores the fact that “strength” can also mean availability of force, utility and, above all, potency. So, I would argue that reducing the size of our armed forces does not necessarily mean that the application of military force is any less credible. Let us be clear that the vast reduction in our armed forces since the second world war is not just a Conservative problem. It is something for which successive Governments must take responsibility.
I shall outline some facts if I may. In 2009, after over a decade of Labour government, there were 46,000 fewer service personnel than in 1997. Over the same period, the three services ended up 6,500 personnel short of the MOD’s trained requirement, a figure that is larger than the delta today. The reality is that HM forces fell in size by at least a fifth under Blair and Brown.
Before I am accused of being blindly partisan, let us not forget that the Conservatives did something similar in 2010. I spent a miserable two years in Andover doing my bit to cut the size of the Army from 102,000 to 82,000, and there were sweeping cuts, too, in the RAF and Navy.
Bob Stewart
I remember that in 2010 we cut the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers hugely, and said we would do the job through civilian personnel. Then, in 2015, we cut those civilian personnel. Who will keep all these highly technical things going if we do not have the people?
James Sunderland
I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend, as a Corps man myself. It is imperative that we retain these specialist capabilities so that we can prosecute force using the logistical and engineering support we need.
A decade on, there is no doubt that the Government are serious about investing in defence in a way that has not been seen for years. The massive £24 billion boost over the next four years brings the total to over £188 billion before 2025. This is about military power and strength, particularly in the prosecution of force at range, and when the risks of becoming embroiled in another attritional campaign on land can be mitigated, whereby striking at the heart of enemy command and control is so important.
I am concerned about the 72,000 figure for the Regular Army. Every unit has its challenges with under-manning, the training margin, wider commitments and absence from work due to sickness, compassionate leave or maternity, and my sense is that the Army probably needs an establishment of 82,000 to mobilise a strength of 72,000. I am not convinced that the Army can generate a deployable division with those numbers, and I urge the Minister to do his estimate. However, that is the only note of real caution for me and I welcome the publication of the integrated review—an excellent bit of work.
The dilemma for me and for all of us in this place is whether our focus on coalition operations, higher dependence on technology and the perceived peace dividend since the second world war justify the risks of ever smaller armed forces. But none of us can predict the future—not even politicians—and only time will tell whether this is again a bridge too far.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I get the idea of grey-zone warfare. I studied strategy; I realise that we cannot fight the next war as we fought the last war—I get that, too. The real problem is that we are going to have to do the next war in a different way. I get that. But we have not fought a total war as envisaged, and on which the integrated review is predicated, for over 70 years. Instead, we have fought limited engagements. We have done counter-insurgency, peacekeeping and peacemaking. Some 99%—almost 100%, actually—of all operations have required us to put soldiers on the ground. Suddenly, we are saying that everything should be predicated on grey-zone warfare, and that leaves little else.
Having commanded men—and women, by the way—on peacekeeping missions, I can tell hon. Members that there is a real argument in favour of having enough of them. We are going to cut our Army by 12%. That is an enormous loss. I understand that tanks can be taken out from over the horizon. The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict showed that: the poor devils in those tanks didn’t know what hit them. We have to redesign how we fight and where our tanks go—I get that. But it does seem odd that we are saying tanks are somehow obsolete when we have aircraft carriers that are 500 times bigger and marked from space by a red dot that an intercontinental missile could take out very fast.
I will end by saying how disappointed I am that my Government have cut the regiment I commanded in Bosnia, without even telling me about it in advance—not even one little word. It was dreadful, and it hits me personally. So if I am talking with emotion, so be it. The 2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment did not deserve that, when you think that, per head of population, each Scot has three times as many battalions as each Englishwoman or Englishman—the Scots have three times more infantry battalions than we do in England.
Bob Stewart
And indeed, as my good friend says, they are Fijian. Increasingly, those battalions will have to be manned by Englishmen.
I will end on that point. I understand the logic; I disagree with the result.
Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)
Let me start by paying a few tributes. If my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sara Britcliffe) was in her place today she would certainly mention the long history of the armed forces, especially the Accrington Pals, in Lancashire. Indeed, one of my proudest moments as an elected representative was in my role as a councillor in Pendle when we gave the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment the freedom of the borough.
Members from all parts of this Chamber respect our armed forces—I do mean that sincerely—and we have a long history of doing so. We may differ on what we think is needed at a particular time, but we do have a strong respect for the defence of this nation, and rightly so, because that is one of the oaths that we make when we come to this place.
As has been said by many Members—I will try not to repeat what has been said—the nature of warfare is changing; it is constantly evolving. Every time we find a new defence, someone will find a new method of attack. The problem is becoming more global, more cyber and much more biological in its intent, so do we need the same number of forces as we once did? The answer, unfortunately, is no.
Bob Stewart
Forgive me for intervening yet again, but may I point out that, on most of our operations, we cannot win hearts and minds with a drone, with artificial intelligence or with a precision-guided missile? We must have men and women who talk to people.
Christian Wakeford
I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for his point because it leads me on to what I was about to say. The nature of our armed forces has very much become part of our soft power in international realms, in that it is a peacekeeping force. We go out to offer support across the world when there are natural disasters and when it comes to peacekeeping in areas that need extra support, and we are proud to carry on doing so.
When we look at the support that we offer across the globe, I hope that we can consider maintaining that 0.7% in international aid. That is a very powerful tool in preventing some of these issues from arising in the first place. With peacekeeping, yes, I agree that we do not necessarily need drones, but we do need to find a way to attack some of these powers that are coming forward and that are increasing in their own nature of warfare. Whether we consider the cyber-attacks from Russia or Iran or the biological weapons from elsewhere, it is clear, unfortunately, that some of these places are not safe to send our soldiers. We must consider the safety of our armed forces. For many years, Governments of whatever party have not got that right. I am thinking specifically here of the war in Iraq.
It is right that we are considering this matter. Warfare is evolving and we need to change to keep up with that. We are increasing our expenditure on the armed forces, more than we have done since the cold war, and it is right to do so. It is right that we consider the safety of our nation, but we need to do so in a technological, biological and evolving way, which is why I will not be supporting the motion as it is today. I say that as a proud Member representing a regimental town. The armed forces have a long history there; long may that continue. It is very unfortunate that, again, we are debating not a motion of opposition, but a motion of opportunism. With elections coming up, I wonder why. We are proud of our armed forces on this side of the House, and that will continue for many years to come.
UN Mission in Mali: Armed Forces Deployment
Bob Stewart Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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James Heappey
If I am honest, the hon. Gentleman raises a point that I have not come across in all the briefings I had before the deployment. I will of course look into that dimension, but I am not sure that those terrorist groups are motivated simply by any pecuniary advantage arising from securing the mines that he mentions. These people are ideologically opposed to any sort of religious freedom or social freedom, and I fear that their determination to disrupt and to be violent would endure irrespective of what natural assets lay beneath the earth, but I will of course go and inform myself on that point.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
The Minister says that this force of 300 will form a specialist reconnaissance capability. To do that, the troops will have to speak to the local people. Some 5% to 10% of the local people speak the official language, which is French, and the rest do not. When I took 900 soldiers to Bosnia, I required 20 interpreters—minimum. I suspect we will need at least seven for this force. May I ask my hon. Friend whether there is an ability to recruit interpreters locally, and whether interpreters in both French and local languages—there are quite a few of them—have been thought about? I am sure the answer is yes.
James Heappey
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is absolutely right: interpreters are an essential part of any population-centric military mission. There are French-speaking personnel within the force itself and we will be recruiting local interpreters to join the force. Crucially, they will not just be male interpreters who stand on the shoulder of the male platoon commander but female interpreters who work alongside human security officers, so that we are able to engage with all parts of the community in the course of our mission.
Remembrance, UK Armed Forces and Society
Bob Stewart Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have to say that it is an honour to follow the Minister and his moving speech this afternoon, and I pay tribute to him for his four tours of duty and his decade of service in the Rifles, just as I pay tribute to the service that other hon. Members in all parts of this House have given to our armed forces. Parliament is all the better for Members who have committed service in the forces, and this House is also all the better for the service of Members who are committed to the forces. I look forward to the contributions to this afternoon’s debate of many of those hon. Members who are on the long call list.
As we did this morning in this Chamber, this is indeed the moment we commemorate the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when hostilities ceased in 1918. It is the focus of our national remembrance each year: the moment the nation comes together to honour those who have served, those who have fought to keep us safe, and above all, those who have made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives so that the rest of us may continue to enjoy the freedoms we do today. The Minister put it far more eloquently than many of the rest of us can, but the men and women who wear a British military uniform make a unique commitment to, if needed, put themselves in harm’s way to protect the rest of us. I want this day’s debate to recall not just the lives of those lost in the two world wars, but those of the 7,190 UK service personnel who have died in operations since 1945.
I was reminded of this on Sunday, when I, like the Minister, was proud to lay a wreath alongside the president of our local British Legion branch in Rotherham. His name is Ron Moffett; he served for more than 20 years in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and he talked to me of comrades he had lost in Northern Ireland, in the Falklands, in Afghanistan, and in Germany in training. I want my relatively brief remarks in this debate to concentrate on the ordinary servicemen and women: on their extraordinary sense of duty, and on our duty, in turn, to them.
The Minister was right to say that remembrance has a particular poignancy this year. During 2020, we have marked 75 years since the end of the second world war—VE Day and VJ Day—and 80 years since the battle of Britain, and we have all been forced to find new ways to remember: ways that are perhaps more private, but no less important and no less personal. This year, we have also seen the hallmark values that have been there in generations of our forces personnel come to the fore again, as our troops have stood alongside frontline workers in the fight against the covid virus. I have said to the Defence Secretary that during this new national lockdown in England and the national vaccination challenge ahead, if the Government are willing to make further use of our forces in this fight, they will have our full support and strong backing from the public. The system that we have of military assistance to civil authorities is sound. It has been used 341 times for covid help since mid-March and 41 agreements are still in place, but people want to know now what the plan is. They have a right to know, and they also have a right to regular ministerial reporting on such decisions. I say to the Minister that I hope he and his colleagues will do this, because it will also help better understanding and better support for our military.
The Chief of the Defence Staff was right when he said recently that this should worry us all. He said that the level of understanding about our armed forces is at “an unprecedented low.” That is borne out by research that the British Forces Broadcasting Service published in June, which confirmed that 68% of the population do not know what the military actually do when they are not in combat. One third had no idea that our military play a part in thwarting terrorism or dealing with the aftermath of floods, and 53% believe that they use battle tanks to get around on a daily basis.
John Healey
The hon. Gentleman is harking back to the days when perhaps he did use battle tanks on a daily basis, but I think we are a little short of tanks to go round these days.
On a serious point, the number of veterans in society is set to fall by a third during this decade. It is clear to me that we must do more at all levels to reinforce our country’s understanding of and commitment to our armed forces.
On cadets, community cadet numbers have been falling and we cannot just rely on private schools. We can do more to reinvest in more community cadet forces. We now rely more on the professional expertise and skills of reservists, but the numbers are still below target, and we can do more to make recruitment better and employer support stronger.
On resilience, the covid pandemic has demonstrated that national resilience is an important part of national defence, and we can do more to strengthen Britain’s total deterrence, with large-scale joint civil, corporate and military exercises. On veterans, the Office for Veterans’ Affairs was a welcome step last year, but we can do more to make the UK the best place to be a veteran by enshrining the armed forces covenant in law. I say constructively and respectfully to the Minister that if the Government are willing to take those steps, they will have our full support to do so.
In this debate, we rightly celebrate the national pride we have in our military personnel, full-time and reservist. They are respected around the world for their professionalism and their all-round excellence, but I say again constructively and respectfully that if Ministers talk up our armed forces, they must also account for the declines there have been in the past decade or two. Since 2010, our full-time forces numbers are down by 40,000. Our military has never been smaller since we fought Napoleon 200 years ago. Forces pay is down, forces recruitment is down and forces morale is down. One in four military personnel now say they plan to quit before the end of their contract.
In 2015, the strategic defence review, in 89 pages, devoted just one and a half pages to personnel. Just like the 2010 defence review, it was largely a cover for cuts, which is why our armed forces are nearly 12,000 short of the strength promised in that 2015 review. It is why essential equipment, from new tanks to the radar system to protect our new aircraft carriers, is long overdue, and it is why our defence budget has a £13 billion black hole.
The Defence Secretary has rightly said that previous reviews
“failed because they were never in step with the spending plans”.—[Official Report, 6 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 647.]
Both sides of the House recognise that the Chancellor cut the ground from under the Defence Secretary when he postponed this year’s comprehensive spending review, but we also know that our adversaries will not pause. They confront us with continuous and constantly developing threats that no longer conform to any distinction between peace and war and are no longer confined to the land, sea and air domains of conventional warfare. So the Government’s integrated review is needed now more than ever.
As we move, as the Defence Secretary has put it, from “industrial age” to “information age” warfare, we must never neglect one fact: at the heart of our defence and security remain our forces personnel. Autonomous weapons, artificial intelligence and robotics will all become more and more widespread in the years ahead, but the essential utility of the men and women of our armed forces will remain central. Whether it is the frontline forces personnel doing city-wide covid testing in Liverpool or the special forces who took back control of the Nave Andromeda in the English channel last month, these are only the most recent reminders that although high-tech systems are essential, our highly trained British troops are indispensable. When the Chief of the Defence Staff launched our important new military doctrine, the military integrated operating concept, in September, he stressed that it
“emphasises the importance of our people—who have always been, and always will be, our adaptive edge.”
We honour them and we remember them.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I start by quoting a poem by “Woodbine Willie”—Padre Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy:
“There are many kinds of sorrow
In this world of love and hate
But there is no keener sorrow
Than a soldier’s for his mate.”
That is very apposite for me today because I remember all the men who were killed under my command. In particular today, may I mention those killed at Ballykelly on 6 December 1982? Seventeen people were killed: six of them were civilians and 11 were soldiers. Six of the soldiers were from my own company, A Company of the Cheshires—Steven Bagshaw, Clinton Collins, Philip McDonough, David Stitt, Steven Smith and Shaw Williamson. They all died when I was present.
I was the incident commander. As I went into the wrecked building that was the Droppin Well, almost the first person I saw was a girl lying on the ground. I was horrified. Both her legs had gone, and an arm. I knelt down—horrified, again—and spoke to her: “Are you all right, darling?” She said, “I think so.” I said, “Are you hurting?” She said, “No.” I said to her, “How are you feeling?” She said, “I don’t know. What’s happened?” I said, “There’s been a bomb.” “Oh”, she said, “am I hurt?” I said, “You’re hurt.” She said, “Am I hurt very badly?” I said, “You’re hurt very badly.” She said, “Am I going to die?” Forgive me—I said, “Yes.” I could see no other way; there was blood everywhere. She said, “Am I going to die now?”, and I said, “I think you are.” She said, “Will you hold me?” I held her and she died within two minutes. I wept. She died in a state of grace. She was one of 17 killed that day.
It took me four hours to identify my six soldiers in the morgue of Altnagelvin Hospital. I went to their funerals in Cheshire—six funerals in five days, two on the Friday. At the second funeral, as I came out of St George’s church in Stockport, there was an old lady crying on the far side of the road. I crossed over. I was in uniform. I put my arm round her and I said to her, “Don’t worry—he’s out of his pain.” She said, “You don’t understand, young man.” I said, “I do understand”, because I felt inside my brain that I did understand— I was there when he died. But she read my brain—what I was thinking. She said, “No, you don’t understand. You see, I stood here when I was a little girl and watched 6th Cheshires”—I think it was 6th Cheshires; they were Cheshires—“march into that church, 900 of them. After the battle of the Somme they filled three pews. I am crying for them.” Then I understood.
One thousand, four hundred and forty-one soldiers, sailors and airmen—service personnel—died in Northern Ireland. That is more than in all the other conflicts together since, by 50%. You have to remember that.
I remember, too, my escort driver, Wayne Edwards, killed on 13 January 1993. I had given the order to escort four women to hospital through Gornji Vakuf, and he was shot through the head as he did so. I am responsible for his death.
When I came here in 2010, I went into the Tea Room and a guy comes up to me and he says, “Nice to see you, Colonel—we haven’t met since Turbe.” I said, “Why?” He said, “I was in the Bosnian Croat army. I was a sniper.” I said, “The snipers shot Staff Sergeant Steve Bristow in the head. You were a sniper.” He said, “Yes.” I said, “Well, that’s a turn-up for the books—you’re working in the House of Commons and I arrive here and you’re actually a sniper that’s shot one of my soldiers.” He said, “Yes.” But here is the point: he was a young man doing his duty, as he saw it. He was not a criminal; he was just doing what he thought was right.
When I think of Remembrance Day, I am not just thinking of the soldiers, sailors and airmen; I am thinking of the civilians. In my own constituency, 320 civilians were killed in the second world war—more than the servicemen from my own constituency. So I am thinking of them. I am particularly thinking of the civilians too. I am thinking of that girl—one of five killed on 6 December. It saddens me that they are not here, and that is what Remembrance Day is all about.