Defence Expenditure

Debate between Brendan O'Hara and Bob Stewart

Thursday 27th October 2016 Westminster Hall

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

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I add my voice to those congratulating the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) on securing this important debate. As we have heard from other hon. Members, he has been an excellent chair of the Defence Committee. I congratulate him and his Committee on their report “Shifting the goalposts? Defence expenditure and the 2% pledge”.

I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate, but particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Stirling (Steven Paterson), for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) and for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady). [Interruption.] And the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) of course, although I will have to caveat that by saying that I agreed with much of what my hon. Friends said and, as the hon. Gentleman will not be too upset to discover, I did not agree with a great deal of what he had to say.

What has been confirmed to us today is that the 2% target was created to redress the balance between the defence budgets of the United Kingdom, the other European NATO members and the United States. It has been correctly pointed out that it does not necessarily follow that achieving the 2% target will deliver the defence capabilities required by the UK. The Defence Committee was very aware of the limitations of the arbitrary 2% figure in delivering capability. It may well, as has often been stated in this debate, have a powerful symbolic meaning in the context of the perceived commitment of the UK to our NATO allies. As the report says, it

“sends an important message to all the UK’s partners and potential adversaries.”

However, as I am sure the right hon. Member for New Forest East would agree, that is a far cry from saying that we are getting this right. Committing a minimum percentage of GDP to defence may well send the desired message, but—as my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling said—it does not adequately protect us from the threats that we ourselves have identified. I need not remind hon. Members of the words of General Sir Richard Barrons just last month. He said that the UK armed forces had lost much of their ability to fight a conventional war and accused the MOD of sidestepping “profoundly difficult” strategic challenges. He also said that there is

“no military plan to defend the UK in a conventional conflict.”

Let us be clear: that is because we have made in this country the political choice to go down a nuclear route at the expense of a conventional route. That will have massive consequences for what we can do now and in future. Do not just take my word for it. Just last year, when General Sir Richard Shirreff spoke at the Defence Committee, he said one either goes

“down the line of a nuclear capability at the expense of conventional capability, or conventional capability at the expense of nuclear.”

As a result of our decisions, our vital conventional defence capability has been sacrificed on the altar of this Government’s obsession with nuclear weapons. As my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow North and for Stirling said, the most notable casualty of that is the Type 26 programme, which has been cut, delayed, cut again and further delayed while the Ministry of Defence struggles to find the money to cut the first steel on the Type 26 frigates. Lord West, a former First Sea Lord, said:

“Because of pressures…our numbers have declined. Not only is that a problem for our defence capability and the security of our nation and our people; it is a problem for our shipbuilding and our defence industries.”

The lesson we have learned from this Government is that there will always be money for nuclear weapons and that it will always come at the expense of our conventional defence. How much longer will the workers on the Clyde have to wait to start work on the Type 26 programme? How much longer does the Ministry of Defence believe it can eke out the ageing Type 23 fleet? Those frigates were supposed to have been taken out of commission by 2023, but that is now virtually impossible to see happening. The Type 26 frigates are badly needed by the Navy and are a vital part of our conventional capability; however, they are being sacrificed because of this Government’s obsession with nuclear weapons.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman—he might even be a friend—for giving way. I repeat: a primary role of the Type 26 global combat ship is to preserve our independent nuclear deterrent. Frankly, if we really go down that road, perhaps we do not need the Type 26. If the Scottish National party were in power, it would get rid of our independent nuclear deterrent, make us really vulnerable and get rid of the Type 26 frigates while it was at it.

[Brendan O'Hara]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s repetition and think that my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling adequately answered him previously. There is much more to the Type 26 frigates than simply protecting the deterrent. The workers on the Clyde were initially promised 13, which has subsequently been cut to eight. All we are asking the Government to do is honour their commitment and fulfil their promise to the workers on the Clyde.

Whatever the Government’s method of calculating defence expenditure, we have grave concerns about their strategic choices and the effects those are having on the UK’s defensive posture. As the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) and the hon. Member for North Wiltshire said, the MOD’s creative accountancy and ability to hide a multitude of sins in a fog of statistics is the stuff of legend. Let us be absolutely clear, as Professor Phillips O’Brien at St Andrews University said recently, defence

“cuts have fallen disproportionately on the guts of British defence: the army and logistics.”

The Army is smaller than it has been for centuries while the Government throw obscene amounts of money at Trident.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife said, although 2% may act as a useful benchmark and a statement of intent, let us not kid ourselves that it means anything more than what the MOD wants it to mean. As we have heard on numerous occasions this afternoon, if we take previous measures of defence spending, it brings us well below the desired figure. Only by adding a whole range of spending priorities, from pensions to Trident, can we achieve that 2%. In many ways, that renders “2%” meaningless—it becomes a totem rather than any meaningful gauge of how we defend this country. The Government have thrown everything into the pot, including the kitchen sink—indeed, we probably could claim against the kitchen sink—in order to play what has become a rather crude numbers game.

On this side of the House, we have said many times that the Select Committee’s report noted that meeting the minimum NATO spending targets does not mean that defence is adequately resourced. That is very clearly the case under this Government and previous ones. Their sums do not add up, and we believe that their decisions have been highly detrimental to the armed forces and to this country’s conventional capabilities.

In his opening statement, the right hon. Member for New Forest East said that there had been no jiggery-pokery by the MOD, but I am sure he would agree that there is, indeed, a strong whiff of jiggery-pokery in reaching the 2% target. The Government have had to rely on childish tricks, including conflating international development and defence spending, to reach this target. They have ignored numerous requests from the Committee to come clean and to explain where that money has been re-accounted for.

In conclusion, this debate has shown that the 2% figure is pretty meaningless; it is a totem and is merely symbolic. The debate is now about what we should be doing with the real money we have, rather than posturing with percentages. It is about the amount of money we have and what we do with it, not whether it is 1%, 2%, 3% or—in the opinion of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire—4%. We can do better if we allocate it properly, which means allocating it to our conventional defences and not pouring it down the black hole that is Trident.