Defence and Security Review (NATO)

Debate between Caroline Dinenage and Adam Afriyie

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to take part in this debate, not because I am a member of the Defence Committee or a former Defence Minister, but because I represent an area, Gosport, with such a proud military heritage. As far back as the Crimean war and beyond, my constituency supplied the Navy with explosives, fuel, food, equipment and people. Indeed, sailors injured in Crimea were attended to at the Haslar hospital, while others returning to Gosport from the campaign formed the naval lads brigade, which is today known as the sea cadets, to help orphans created by the conflict. Now, 160 years later, my constituents and our neighbours in Portsmouth harbour are still proudly serving our armed forces and once again find themselves concerned by events in Crimea.

As the excellent Defence Committee report sets out, the Russian invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine has created the need for a fundamental shift in calculations about European security. I fully support the recommendations regarding improvements to NATO’s rapid reaction force and the need to undertake large-scale military exercises, and I of course welcome the recommendations regarding preparations to defend the Baltic states from what they refer to as ambiguous warfare.

It will come as no surprise that I want to focus on the Prime Minister’s NATO commitment to spend 2% of our GDP on defence. Why does it matter? Quite simply, it matters because failing to hit the 2% target would degrade our armed forces, damage our standing with our allies and hit our credibility as a major player in NATO and on the world stage. Above all, it would clearly limit the ability of our armed forces to project and protect our interests around the world. As Professor Michael Clarke of the Royal United Services Institute says, it would have an obvious and overwhelming impact on the kind of military we can afford.

We already do not have enough combat aircraft, and yet, given existing spending commitments and the necessary replacement of Trident, there would probably be a fall in the overall number of combat aircraft for the RAF and the Navy. The Navy now has just 18 major warships and it may struggle to order the 12 or 13 new Type 26 frigates it had planned. The Minister will say that our naval ships are now better equipped and more advanced than ever before, but they still have not mastered the objective of being in more than one place at the same time.

The proud military heritage of my area on the south coast has sadly already suffered job losses as a result of BAE’s decision to terminate ship building at Portsmouth, and further jobs are now threatened by the early withdrawal of the Lynx helicopters, because Vector Aerospace, which maintains and repairs them, is the largest employer in my constituency. Further cuts to the armed forces could have a devastating impact on communities on the south cost.

The impact of failing to meet the 2% target goes far beyond the denuding effect it would have on our armed forces and the communities that support them. As the Government acknowledge in their response to the Committee’s report,

“the proportion of GDP devoted to defence is an important indicator of how seriously members view collective security.”

The 2% is not just about the additional troops, tanks, fighters and frigates that it will secure; it is a symbol, both to our allies and to our enemies.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

My constituency, like that of my hon. Friend, has a strong military history. Does she agree that one of the great insights in the report is that this is not only about the percentage of defence spending, but about the allocation of spending in a world where high technology and asymmetric techniques are used in modern warfare?

[Caroline Dinenage]

As the Chairman of the Defence Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), has already pointed out, we face a more uncertain world than ever. The 2% level not only secures the right equipment, but is a sign of our willingness to back up our words with action. If we fail to meet the target, our credibility as a major player on the international stage is in question.

Teddy Roosevelt famously described his foreign policy by saying:

“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

At the summit in Wales, we explicitly encouraged other nations to aim to spend 2% of their GDP on defence. If we fail to meet the 2% target, having stated our intention to do so and encouraged our allies to follow suit, we run the risk of shouting our heads off very loudly while brandishing a very unimpressive stick. There would be other repercussions. We are the lead military power in NATO Europe, so if we fail to meet the 2% target, other European NATO countries will follow our lead and cut back their own defences. Why should they invest when we are cutting back? It would also damage our reputation with one of the few other countries currently hitting the 2% target, the USA. As we have heard today, the head of the US army has said he is “very concerned” about the potential failure to meet the 2% target. Further cuts to our armed forces will undermine our credibility as an effective partner and ally.

Such a move would not go unnoticed elsewhere. All the strategies to protect the Baltic states will be meaningless —crucially, they will be seen to be meaningless by potential adversaries—if they are not properly financed. Russia’s defence spending has increased by an average of 10% a year since the invasion of Georgia in 2008. When we need to show strength to deter aggression, we cannot afford to cut back our military capability.

It is important to have both clarity and candour in this debate. There are those who believe that we no longer have a significant role to play in the world, and consequently that spending on defence is not a priority. I think that the nature of the threats we face from an aggressive Russian dictator who rips up the international rulebook, as well as those from ISIS and other terrorist organisations, means that now would be the worst possible time to cut defence.

There is at least a flawed logic to arguing that if we do not want to be a major player on the world stage, we do not need strong armed forces. What we absolutely must not do is kid ourselves that we can deprive our armed forces of the resources they need, but still hope to retain the same level of influence and security. We need an open and honest debate about what we want the armed forces to deliver and what we want their future to be. If our ambitions are smaller, then we need to come clean and say how many thousands of troops we are prepared to lose, how many frigates we are ready to scrap and how many job losses we will take. The worst thing we could possibly do would be to end up with armed forces that are shrunken and deprived of the resources they need but which that still expected to operate at exactly the same level.

I do not believe that we should retreat from the world. We are the fastest growing economy in the developed world, with a seat on the UN Security Council, one of the most extensive diplomatic networks and the best trained armed forces on the planet. We have consistently stood up for human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and the world would be worse off were we to shrink from that role. More importantly, I do not believe that we can retreat from the world. We cannot opt out of the threats posed by Russia, ISIS and others. Putin wants to take Europe back to the 19th century and the days of spheres of influence, and ISIS wants to burn western civilisation in the fires of an Islamist caliphate. Spending 2% of our GDP on defence is not a vanity; in a world that has not felt more unstable in my lifetime, it is the best way to preserve the peace and stability that our fathers and grandfathers fought so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve.