Strategic Defence and Security Review

Caroline Dinenage Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I declare an interest in this debate as the wife of a serving naval officer. It was in that capacity that I was in the arrivals lounge at RAF Brize Norton on Saturday. Today, we have addressed the technical side of the SDSR, but the human side of it was etched on the faces of the families waiting with me in that arrivals lounge and could be seen in the emotional scenes of reunion as the soldiers, sailors and airmen returned to the arms of their loving families. It was a powerful reminder to me of the responsibility and duty that we have as politicians to not only the men and women of the armed services, but their families back home.

In this time of deficit and defence reviews, it is vital that we in the Chamber are aware of a fundamentally important point. The armed forces are not just a homogenous mass of fighting machine; they are about people—soldiers, sailors, airmen, as well as their wives, children, partners and parents. We ask these people to lay their lives, or those of the people whom they love most in the world, on the line, so these people must be at the heart of any decisions we make about the armed forces. That means giving them enough manpower and the best equipment we can afford to enable them to do their jobs safely and properly, as well as respecting them enough to restore the military covenant and address the quality of life issues that can seriously affect morale.

All the UK armed forces have been operating at a sustained high tempo since the end of the cold war, which has meant that our armed forces have endured a near continuous cycle of deployed operations for well over 20 years. The effect on our servicemen and women is hard to quantify, and what is even more difficult to ascertain is the effect on those left behind. That is why rest and recuperation is such a vital part of the military covenant. It provides a useful period in which service personnel and their families can regroup and prepare for redeployment. It is essential, therefore, that the R and R clock starts when the person actually arrives back in the UK, to allow the maximum time for the unseen wounds of stress to be in some way healed, prior to returning to the front line.

Currently, R and R starts as soon as somebody leaves their front-line base, and in the case of Afghanistan, it can often take up to three days to get back. That has nothing to do with manpower. Operation Herrick manning within infantry battle groups allows for the extra personnel to cover those on R and R. The delays are actually due to the lack of capacity within the strategic air bridge between the operational theatre and the UK. If we are serious about looking after the continuing health of our forces, surely it is fairer that we adopt the American system, in which the leave period begins only when they touch down on US soil.

We also have an obligation to provide our servicemen and women with the equipment they need to do their jobs properly. There is a simple point here: fail to prepare, prepare to fail. It is clear that in years gone by, our armed forces have not been adequately equipped to deal with current and emerging threats. Equipment deficiencies have resulted in billions of pounds being spent under the urgent operational requirements process, and tales of equipment shortages during Operation Telic, in the second gulf war, were well documented and widely reported in the press. However unpalatable the cost of re-equipping our armed forces, it is a necessary process, and failure to invest in defence procurement allows the gap between current and required capability to widen more quickly.

At present, despite ever decreasing resources, we continue to play our full part on the world stage, but a review is needed of how operations are planned and how thinly we spread our resources. The Army currently operates in 80 countries worldwide, and the Royal Navy, the senior service, which has a long and distinguished history firmly rooted in my Gosport constituency, continues to operate all over the world, from anti-piracy missions of Somalia to the fight against drugs in the Caribbean, and of course supporting operations in Afghanistan. As 80% of the world’s population lives within 150 miles of the sea, aircraft carriers and the aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm have the ability to influence nations from international waters. That is the strategic effect that this nation has fought to maintain and that other nations, such as India and China, are so desperate to acquire.

Recent history shows how important those carriers are. I am talking about the Falklands conflict back in 1982, lest we forget that we could not have liberated those islands without two aircraft carriers, and had the taskforce lost one of those carriers, both military and political history would have been rewritten. The Falklands war also teaches us the importance of adaptability. If this country is to play a role in the world, we must be ready and able to react to any threat that arises, in any area of the world. In 1982, we had sufficient capacity to deal with the loss of ships we suffered, but today’s fleet has been cut to the bare bones and we are spread very thin.

In recent years, we have had a tendency to produce technically advanced warships in smaller and smaller numbers, evidenced by the new Type 45s. To paraphrase Stalin, however, quantity has a quality of its own. It does not take a genius to figure out that no matter how powerful a warship, it cannot be in two places at the same time. If we are to continue to send our brave soldiers, airmen and sailors out to meet our world commitment, it is our duty to do so only if we can ensure that they have sufficient manpower, ships, aircraft and equipment to get the job done and to bring them home safely.