Britain and International Security

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

rose—

[Michael Fallon]

I am in the hands of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that other Members want to speak, but I will give way to my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Fallon]

I absolutely agree. That is what the Prime Minister calls a “full spectrum” effect. We have to deal with these things right across the board—with diplomacy and tackling radicalisation, as well as the harder power that we are charged with. I wish my hon. Friend well in her experiences with the armed forces parliamentary scheme.

In describing the personnel who serve this country across the globe, it would be wrong not to mention those who work in our nuclear submarines. In those submarines, unseen and undetected, we have an ultimate deterrent that has now been maintained for more than 46 years. It is right to pay tribute to the men and women of that service, whose work is unseen but never out of our minds.

Apart from the United States, no other country has our global reach or defence footprint, which I have described. In a world where global problems demand global solutions, we are leveraging that influence to strengthen our international partnerships. At the multilateral level, we have encouraged NATO, the cornerstone of our defence, to upgrade its capabilities and increase allies’ defence spending. Bilaterally, we have worked with the French to form the combined joint expeditionary force, with some 1,000 British and French personnel taking part in an exercise this year to bring us up to full operating capacity next year. Our relationship with the United States remains as strong as ever. We are working together not just in Europe and the Baltic, but in the Gulf, the Red sea and the Indian ocean. The United States Defence Secretary, Ash Carter, emphasised the importance of that relationship when I met him at NATO ministerial meetings last week.

We have been able to maintain this vast range of activity only because of the reforms we have implemented. We cannot have strong defence without a strong economy, so we had to take some tough decisions. We are now on course to deliver more than £5 billion of savings since 2010. We are making efficiency part of the culture of the Ministry of Defence and of our armed forces by making the drive to seek savings a habit. That approach has allowed us to protect the front line better, to maintain the existing size of our regular and reserve forces and to ensure that our personnel have the high-end capability they need, as well as to spend £160 billion over the next 10 years on the new hunter-killer submarines, helicopters, armoured vehicles and joint strike fighters that are needed.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Does the Secretary of State accept that there is a large defence capability gap, and does he now regret the ill-advised and short-sighted decision to abandon the maritime patrol aircraft that were chopped up and left to rot after the 2010 SDSR?

[Michael Fallon]

Tough decisions were taken back in 2010, but let me tell the hon. Gentleman that the maritime patrol aircraft, which were supposed to have been delivered some 10 years previously, did not exist. Not a single aircraft had been handed over to the RAF. The programme was years behind schedule. The Conservative Government ordered them, but in their 13 years the Labour Government did not deliver them. There was not an aircraft on the tarmac, so we had to take a tough decision to organise our maritime patrol capability differently. That will of course be one of the areas that will be considered in the 2015 review, which is now under way.

Let me turn to that review. We have to deal not just with the challenges of today, but with those of tomorrow, which I think was the point made by the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). I know that the strategic defence and security review has generated high levels of interest in this House, and I am grateful to the Defence Select Committee of the last Parliament for its reports, which are certainly informing our work.

The 2015 review will build on the 2010 review. Much of its analysis still holds good. We were right to identify counter-terrorism and cyber as key areas for investment, to start reshaping the Army for a post-Afghanistan future and to reform our defence structures. The 2010 review was the first forward-looking review of national security policy, plans and capabilities to cover all national security departments, not just defence. It established the National Security Council, ensuring strategic decision making at the top of Government, and it underlined the need for more agile forces in an era that is placing a greater number of more diverse demands on defence, which we are meeting through our Future Force. We are therefore far better placed for a review today than we were five years ago.

The review that is under way must reflect a world that now looks darker and more dangerous than at any time since the end of the cold war. It will consider the full range of threats that we face now and in the future, examine the capabilities that we need to handle those threats, and help us to judge how to resource those capabilities. Underpinned by a strong evidence base, the review will unite diplomacy, defence, development and homeland security. It will recognise that our security and prosperity at home and abroad are interlinked. It will also focus on opportunity and innovation—on getting the most out of our whole national security workforce, not just the uniformed services; on strengthening the defence and security industries to harness their technological know-how; on promoting the prosperity agenda; and on cementing key international partnerships.

We expect the review to be completed before the end of the year, but today is a good chance for me to listen to colleagues’ views as well as to speak. The House has huge expertise in defence, development and national security, and I invite Members, whether they are going to speak today or not, to make submissions on the defence aspects of the review directly to me at the Ministry of Defence. We would welcome those submissions.

I say to those who are worried about the events of last Friday that we have highly capable armed forces, respected the world over, and we are putting in one of the biggest defence efforts of any nation in the world, with the fifth biggest defence budget. We are doing that right around the world, and for all the right reasons—to defend the values of freedom, tolerance and the rule of law that we hold dear. To the terrorists in Tunisia and extremists wherever they are, that is the best possible answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Salmond]

I am glad that I have captured the attention of the Labour Front Bench, and I hope what I have said will receive wide support in the House.

Another reason for my scepticism is my experience—an experience that I have shared with a number of Members over the last 12 years—of successive military interventions in a range of Islamic countries. At each stage it was argued, and we were assured, that the next intervention would be the absolute key, or at least would deliver progress towards the objectives of this country. I think it must be said that, on each and every occasion, exactly the reverse has come about.

According to the House of Commons Library, 2,047 days have passed since Sir John Chilcot made his opening statement in the Iraq inquiry. By contrast, the first world war lasted 1,561 days, and the second world war lasted only slightly longer than the Chilcot inquiry, at 2,075 days. I am told that a trip to Mars and back would take 520 days. We are also reminded that the Franks inquiry into the Falklands war took a little over six months.

I think it very important—and I would apply this, with great respect, to those who voted for intervention in Iraq, including the present Prime Minister, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer and the present Secretary of State for Defence—for us to reflect on the lessons of that intervention, and also the wider interventions which have, in my view, removed despotic tyrants only to create political vacuums from which unspeakable horrors have now emerged. I think that we should reflect on the wisdom of what we are doing before embarking on another extension of military intervention without at least establishing a specific line of causality between the latest atrocity carried out against United Kingdom citizens and the way in which military intervention would affect it. My view of this matter is tempered by experience, and that experience has not been helpful to those who advocate military intervention.

The third reason for my scepticism is one of practicality. I hope that I shall be able to type in my eight-numeral password so that I can find something that I read a few minutes ago on this iPad. I had looked up the derivation of the dictum “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” . I was once told that it had originated from Sandhurst—that it was the Sandhurst view of diplomacy—but further examination reveals that it is much, much more ancient than that. In fact, the original dictum came not from Sandhurst but from Sanskrit. It is as old as recorded history itself. Having consulted my iPad, I now understand that there is a Bedouin Arabic version of the proverb which reads “Me and my brother against my cousin, but me and my cousin against the stranger”.

The dictum about “my enemy’s enemy” no doubt applies to many situations in many countries in the world, but I think that one country where it certainly does not apply—or where it is not easy to fathom—is Syria. In Syria, your enemy’s enemy is just as likely, perhaps more likely, to be your enemy than to be your friend. It is a country of extraordinary complexity. We read of the anguished debates about Syria that are taking place in the United States at the moment about the wisdom of specific air strikes on specific targets, and whether the allied air force will end up bombing the wrong people in Syria and undercutting the aims that the campaign is meant to engender. For that third reason, practicality, we remain to be convinced that this is a wise course of action.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend that the situation is extremely complex. Every Member who has spoken in the debate seems to have accepted the complex and ever-changing nature of the threat that we now face. The response to that threat must be flexible and innovative. Does my right hon. Friend agree that nuclear weapons cannot be used to combat terrorism, and are, in fact, useless at protecting citizens against sentence atrocities? Does he agree that the Government’s plan to spend £100,000 million on renewing Trident, while at the same time making swingeing cuts in the conventional forces on which we shall rely more and more, is an extremely worrying development?

[Alex Salmond]

I do agree with my hon. Friend. I could, if I wished, spend a great deal of time talking about Trident to Conservative Members, but I shall try to confine myself specifically to the issue that the Secretary of State has cast as the issue under discussion. Nevertheless, I think that there is a connection between these issues. The Secretary of State talked about a number of threats that the United Kingdom faced. To remarkably few of those threats would anyone present the Trident nuclear system or its renewal as an effective answer, and it could certainly not be presented as an answer to the threat that we face from terrorism.

In summary, I say to the House that we could achieve something together by accepting the wisdom of so many of our Arabic friends and so many of our allies that “Daesh” is the right term to describe terrorists. Is a terrorist by any other name still a terrorist? Most certainly. Does it matter that they are called “terrorist” and not accorded the respectability of being referred to as a state or representing a religion? I think it matters a very great deal, and I think we are on the point of a consensus on the matter—and I hope the Secretary of State for Defence will, perhaps, be able to go further in summing up this debate.

We are sceptical and opposed in the current circumstances to extending the air campaign into Syria. We would have to see the legal basis, and the practicality would have to be much better understood. In particular, a great deal of my experience in this House, and our experience collectively as a country over past years, tells us that interventions can have unforeseen consequences. Many of our interventions and extensions of military action could at best be described as counter-productive and at worst have helped to replenish the dark well from which terrorism is now springing.