Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons
Debate between Chris Bryant and Liam Fox(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
There are a number of things on which the House will be generally agreed. The first is that, for whatever reason, there is widespread scepticism among the British public about any further military involvement overseas. A number of questions need to be answered before we become involved in any form of military action. The first is what a good outcome looks like, the second is whether such an outcome can be engineered, the third is whether we will be part of engineering such an outcome, and the fourth is how much of the eventual outcome we want to have ownership of.
I do not believe that we can answer any of those questions to our satisfaction with regard to the civil war in Syria. I believe that that is why the British public are deeply sceptical about our being involved in that civil war in any way, shape or form. I share that scepticism. I also believe that there is no national interest for the United Kingdom in taking a side in that civil war. To exchange an Iran-friendly and Hezbollah-friendly Assad regime for an anti-west, anti-Christian and anti-Israel al-Qaeda regime does not seem to offer us any advantage.
However, that is not the issue before us today. There is a separate issue on which we need to have great clarity, which is how we respond to a regime that has used chemical weapons against its civilian population—something that is against international law and is a war crime. The pictures we have seen in recent days have shocked us, even in our desensitised age. The pictures of toddlers laid out in rows were, and should be, deeply disturbing to all of us. The question is whether we are willing to tolerate more such pictures and, if not, how we go about minimising the risk of such pictures coming to our screens in the future.
It is true that if we take action against the Assad regime we cannot guarantee that it will not do something, or similar things, again in the future, but I believe it will minimise the risk and show the people of Syria that we are on their side and that the rest of the world is serious about its obligations in enforcing the existing law about the use of chemical weapons.
Much of the debate has focused on the consequences of taking action, but we must also focus on the consequences of not taking action. Will it make the Syrian people more or less safe from the use of such weapons in the future? On the implications for the Syrian regime, will it make it feel that it is more or less secure in taking such actions again in the future? On regimes in other parts of the world that might decide to use chemical weapons against their domestic populations, what signal would we send them about the international community’s willingness to stop such use in future if we do nothing? Let us also not forget the onlookers in this—Iran—who have their own nuclear intentions and are intent on testing the will of the international community.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I accept many of the points that the right hon. Gentleman is making, but many Opposition and, I think, Government Members would say that this is not a choice between action and inaction; it is simply a choice of what action should be taken. Some of us worry that military action might exacerbate the situation, rather than make it better, and draw us into mission creep, over which we would have very little control.
Dr Fox
I entirely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, which is valid. As the Prime Minister said, it is a judgment call. It is incumbent on those who take these decisions ultimately to determine whether they think it is more likely that we will be drawn into such a conflict or whether we will achieve the objectives without that happening. That is a matter for legitimate debate in the House. I believe that if we do not take action—and that probably means military action—the credibility of the international community will be greatly damaged. What value would red lines have in the future if we are unwilling to implement those that already exist?
Defence Responsibilities
Debate between Chris Bryant and Liam Fox(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Fox
My hon. Friend is not the only one who would like this put behind us quickly, but I think that it is more important that it is put behind us thoroughly and comprehensively. I do not wish in any way to diminish the seriousness of some of the questions that have been raised and I hope that what I have set out today, and the process the Prime Minister has set out for the Cabinet Secretary to examine further questions, will ensure that such an inquiry is thorough rather than quick.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is right—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I am sure that hon. Members will agree with everything I am about to say. The Secretary of State is right that it is perfectly understandable for a Minister, when travelling abroad, to bump into a friend. It is also perfectly understandable for a Minister, even in politics, to have a friend—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is one of mine, so he should be careful. However, the Secretary of State is stretching our credulity by suggesting that he could have done so on 18 separate occasions. Will he provide us with a list of the meetings when he went abroad when Mr Werritty was not present? Is the only reason that Mr Werritty was able to be there because he had access to the Secretary of State’s diary? From what we see he is going to continue to have access to it—surely, that is inappropriate.
Dr Fox
In general, it is inappropriate for the civil service or anyone else to release ministerial diaries, which could be a threat to the security of the Minister or to national security. Where Ministers choose to give information in advance about where they will be to family or friends, that is perfectly reasonable. I would say to the hon. Gentleman that Ministers—particularly Defence and Foreign Ministers—travel abroad with excessive regularity and I would be happy to provide him with a list of the times I have been abroad, excluding those 18 times, over the year and a half that I have been Secretary of State.
Armed Forces Covenant
Debate between Chris Bryant and Liam Fox(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State clarify something? The council tax relief increase from 25% to 50% applies to second homes where service personnel live in MOD properties or in their first homes where they are living in other properties, but is that mandatory for all local authorities in England or does this apply in England, Wales and Scotland? Would it not be better to make the figure 100%, because it is up to the local authority to make that provision if it wants to, and some local authorities in Wales are now doing that?
Dr Fox
As I said, the increase will go to all those who currently get the 25% discount and they will now be eligible for the 50% rate. I am sure that some councils may wish to go further but, given the current financial environment, I doubt very much that they will be able to do so.
Military Covenant
Debate between Chris Bryant and Liam Fox(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Dr Fox
In a moment.
There are three charges that still hang around the necks of Labour when it comes to defence, the armed forces and the military covenant. In 13 years of power, their response to equipping our forces was often too little, too late; their spending priorities were wrong; and there was too much waste and inadequate budgetary control.
We have learned from the Chilcot inquiry—an independent inquiry—that it was purely for political reasons that the Labour Government failed to order enough equipment, including body armour, for troops in the lead-up to the Iraq war. They did not want to send the message that they were preparing for war, and the result was under-prepared, under-equipped forces sent into conflict.
In 2006, they failed to send enough troops and equipment into Helmand province and were painfully slow at providing more capable armoured vehicles to counter improved explosive devices. That led to a number of high-profile subsequent resignations from the Army, as has been pointed out. They went 12 years without a defence review, even though, according to numerous former Defence Ministers and service chiefs speaking at the Chilcot inquiry, the 1998 SDR was never properly funded. They overstretched our armed forces by fighting two wars on a peacetime budget.
Dr Fox
I will give way in a moment.
The Labour Government overspent and overheated an equipment programme that contributed to a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget. In Labour’s final year in power, the MOD saw a record overspend of £3.3 billion in the equipment programme. In fact, we inherited an equipment programme that has its top 15 projects £8.8 billion over budget and a cumulative delay of 32 years. When we were fighting two wars, their idea of commitment to defence and our armed forces was to appoint four different Defence Secretaries in four years, including one who served simultaneously as Defence Secretary and Secretary of State for Scotland.
Labour left a situation in which 42% of service single living accommodation in the UK, and 52% of overseas single living accommodation, was in the worst grade on a four-point scale—although in a speech that lasted half an hour, the shadow Defence Secretary did not once mention the quality of accommodation for our armed forces.
With all that going on, Labour Defence Secretaries spent almost £250,000 on modern art for the Ministry of Defence. As former Chief of the General Staff General Sir Mike Jackson said in his autobiography, they
“preferred to spend on abstract art money which might otherwise have directly benefited soldiers and their families. It may seem a small point, but to me it was so indicative of the cultural divide in the MoD”.
The list goes on. In this country, we judge politicians not by their words but by their actions. The Labour Government had 13 years to put matters right; we have had nine months so far, and I will set out what we have done already.
Dr Fox
Not at the moment.
I have set out a number of areas where the Government have already acted in just nine months. Some £61.6 million has been allocated in the current financial year for the upgrade of, and improvement programmes for, service accommodation. That will include upgrading some 800 service family homes to the top standard, with a further 4,000 properties benefiting from other improvements such as new kitchens and bathrooms.
Of course, in the current tight financial situation priorities must be established. My welfare priority will be mental health. We have accepted in full the mental health plan for service personnel and veterans set out in the report by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). That will provide a range of improvements in mental health care, including increasing the number of mental health professionals from mental health trusts looking out for veterans and introducing structured mental health surveillance inquiries into routine service medical examinations and all discharge medicals.
The Government are committed to improving health care for our service personnel and have committed an additional £20 million in the SDSR for this purpose, part of which will be used to deliver further enhanced military mental health care services. I believe this must be our priority because it is all too easy to see the physical wounds of war, but the unseen mental wounds of war have too often gone undiagnosed and untreated, and all our society demands that we do not allow a mental health time bomb to be created.
Chris Bryant
I want to ask the Secretary of State about 160 Brigade. As he knows, it is the Welsh brigade based in Brecon. Secret discussions have been going on over the last few weeks about collapsing the brigade and joining it with the West Midlands, which would mean there was no longer a Welsh brigade. Can he give an absolute assurance that that will not happen?
Dr Fox
As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are ongoing discussions in the armed forces, but as he has heard me say on a number of occasions, I am very keen that we have United Kingdom armed forces and that we maintain the footprint as widely as possible across the UK. If he wants to talk to me directly about that, I shall be happy to meet him.
Labour’s legacy means that there is not enough to do all that we would like to do, but we can make a start. None of it alone will instantly rebuild the covenant, but it is a step in the right direction. In the difficult economic circumstances the coalition Government have inherited, where all parts of society are making sacrifices, repairing the covenant will not be straightforward. The armed forces are subject to the difficult decisions we have had to make on pay, pensions and allowances across Government.
Neither the Prime Minister nor I came into politics to see cuts in the armed forces, but we have to deal with the reality of the legacy. Every Department has to make a contribution to deficit reduction and the Ministry of Defence can be no exception. We have to put the economy on the right track for the sake of our national security.
The coalition agreement recognises that we have to do more to ensure that our armed forces and their families have the support they need, and are treated with the dignity they deserve. Some of what we need to do will cost money, and with budgets squeezed, we may not be able to go as quickly as we want, but we will make progress where we can. The recent report on the covenant commissioned by the Prime Minister from the military historian Professor Hew Strachan suggests a number of ways to move forward. We are implementing some of them now and will announce in the near future the other recommendations we support.
As Members know, the military covenant was conceived as an expression of the mutual obligations that exist between the nation, the Army and each individual soldier. In consultation with service charities and others, the Government are rewriting the covenant as a new tri-service document—the armed forces covenant—which expresses the enduring, general principles that should govern the relationship between the nation, the Government and the armed forces community as a whole. It will include all three services, veterans, family members and local communities, thereby broadening the scope of the covenant. We shall publish it in the spring.
The reserve forces form an intrinsic part of the UK’s defence capability and thus the armed forces community. The Ministry of Defence is responsible for ensuring that reservists are treated fairly and with respect, and that they are valued. In the drafting of the armed forces covenant, reserves have been considered equally alongside regulars. That will set the tone for Government policy aimed at improving the support available for serving and former members of the armed forces, and the families who carry so much of the burden, especially, as we remember today, in the event of injury or death.
Armed Forces Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Liam Fox(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Fox
No, not as part of the Bill. However, while the Bill sets out the framework for the covenant, there are ample opportunities in Parliament to change any of the rules and regulations that relate to the armed forces in several ways, through the usual procedures available to the House.
As the House will know, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has spoken of the Government’s desire to enshrine the covenant in law. We have been considering the best way to do that. Our starting point is that the armed forces covenant is fundamentally a moral obligation on the Government, the nation and the armed forces. It is an agreement between the armed forces and the whole nation, not just the Government. It can never be defined by a host of rules and regulations, designed to tell everyone exactly what to do in every circumstance. Certainly, as I have just said to my hon. Friend, when rules need to be changed, we will do so. However, generally the people of this country know how service personnel should be treated, and our task is to create the right framework for that to happen.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that I entirely agree with him about the moral imperative behind the covenant. Some 9% of the armed forces personnel come from Wales, yet only 2% of the armed forces personnel are based in Wales, and that is one of the things that makes it more difficult to have continuity of care for those people once they have left the armed forces. Will the Secretary of State look carefully at basing more of the armed forces personnel in Wales so that that continuity can be maintained, and how will he ensure that the relationship with the Welsh Assembly Government, who have responsibility for health care, education and housing, is maintained?
Dr Fox
I will come on to the issue of the devolved bodies in a moment, but the hon. Gentleman is trying to get me on to the basing debate again. The primary duty of the Government is to ensure that the armed forces are laid out across the United Kingdom in the way that is most beneficial to the defence of the country. However, if the hon. Gentleman is looking for a champion of the cause of the armed forces being tied to the whole concept of the Union, he does not have to look much further. I believe that as we have units that represent the whole of the United Kingdom, we should look, where possible, to ensure that we have basing across the whole of the United Kingdom; but, as I say, the primary responsibility of the Government is to ensure that bases are allocated in a way that makes the greatest sense in terms of the wider defence of the country.
The armed forces covenant is of such importance that it needs to be brought properly to the attention of Parliament. We propose to do this not through long and complex legislation, but through the mechanism of an annual forces covenant report. The relevant clause in the Bill will require me to lay a report before the House every year on the effects that membership of the armed forces has on service people. I have no doubt that the House will wish to take notice of that annual report and undertake whatever scrutiny it considers appropriate.
Defence Treaties (France)
Debate between Chris Bryant and Liam Fox(14 years ago)
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Dr Fox
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his welcome. He is entirely correct that there has been long-standing co-operation. Some of the things that I have read and heard today have made it sound as though this was the first time there had been any military co-operation at all between the United Kingdom and France. Beginning with joint exercising next year, we will examine ways in which we can organically take forward co-operation such as we have outlined today. There is no big bang—this is about working out how we can best improve the relationship incrementally and build confidence over a long period, given the complexities of Afghanistan and so on.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the Secretary of State on the pro-European, very sensible measure that he has introduced. He mentioned introducing the treaties “in the normal way”. I presume that that is a reference to the Ponsonby rule, which we amended earlier this year. Will he therefore guarantee that, as provided for under that rule, there will be a debate and vote on the treaties in each House, so that we can scrutinise the details line by line?
Dr Fox
The Government business managers, in conjunction with the Opposition, will set out how the process will take place, but my personal choice would certainly be to ensure that both Houses have a full opportunity to debate these measures, not least because it would give them the chance to understand fully the benefits that they will bring the United Kingdom.
Strategic Defence and Security Review
Debate between Chris Bryant and Liam Fox(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Fox
The point of the review is to ensure that we have the proper defence for the United Kingdom. We will have further things to say about the defence industrial strategy and how we will take that forward, not least because it represents high levels of employment in some economically less well-off parts of the United Kingdom, and we will come to the House with those proposals in the near future.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new post. I could make a similar point about St Athan with regard to Wales and, for that matter, more deprived areas of the country. However, that is not the point that I want to make about St Athan. Rather it is that, in the light of what the right hon. Gentleman said about the changing nature of warfare, technical training is far more important now than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Is it not absolutely vital that one of our highest priorities be to ensure that such training is improved for all our troops? Does that not mean that we should support and he should support—this is my submission—the St Athan defence training college?
Dr Fox
Given my experience of the hon. Gentleman, I would be extremely surprised if that were the end of his submission, and I look forward to an undoubtedly weighty document landing on my desk. I understand his points, and training is absolutely vital, particularly given the increasing professionalism in the armed forces and the increasing complexity involved. None the less, he will understand that, while that project is being considered as part of the SDSR, it would be inappropriate for me to give him even a hint of our position on it, but if he makes a personal submission, I shall certainly ensure that I read it—undoubtedly at length.