Strategic Defence and Security Review

Dai Havard Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

The value-for-money study on Trident has begun, as has the SDSR, and it will be concluded long before the SDSR. I hope that it will be concluded before the summer recess.

I want to be as open as I can about the backdrop to the SDSR. To take one aspect, the defence budget itself, the future programme is entirely unaffordable, especially if we try to do what we will need to do in future while simultaneously doing everything in the way that we do it today. The legacy that the new Government have inherited means that even if defence spending kept pace with inflation, we would face a deficit of many billions of pounds over the life of this Parliament and more over the next decade. To make things worse, there are additional systemic pressures on the defence budget that exacerbate the situation, including the trend of pay increases above inflation. The previous Government’s approach was too often characterised by delay-to-spend rather than invest-to-save. The decision to slow the rate of the Queen Elizabeth class carriers in 2009, for example, increased the overall costs by more than £600 million at a stroke.

The bottom line is this: no matter how hard we bear down on the costs of administration and drive up efficiency, we cannot expect to bridge the gap by those means alone. The problem is structural, so the response must be structural to put defence on a stable footing. The Ministry of Defence, as a Department of State, must itself face wide-ranging reform. We intend to reorganise the whole organisation into three pillars: first, strategy and policy; secondly, the armed forces; and thirdly, procurement and estates. We intend to create a more efficient and leaner centre, in which everyone knows what they are responsible for and to whom they are accountable, with clear deadlines and budgetary discipline. Major reform of our procurement practices will be accompanied by a number of industrial consultations that I will shortly outline to Parliament.

As much as structural reform is required, however, I am equally determined that the armed forces be reconfigured to meet the needs of the evolving security environment and satisfy the expectations of this country. Although the SDSR is necessarily financially aware, it is policy-based, and I wish to set that policy out to the House.

[Mr Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting now, because what the Secretary of State has just said is hugely important, but may I go back to what he said about the review of the deterrent? May we be clear that the financial review of the nuclear deterrent is due to take place before the recess, that it is a one-off activity and that it will not be part of a continuing review at each of the various stages of the programme that has been outlined, including the main gate stage? Will the Secretary of State clarify that point?

[Dr Fox]

As part of the coalition agreement, we agreed that we would have a value-for-money study to examine the costs of the programme and see where we could achieve better value within it. That is the process that is now ongoing.

The Foreign Secretary has set out the new Government’s distinctive British foreign policy, which has at its heart the pursuit and defence of UK interests and a recognition that our prosperity and security is bound up with that of others. That will require the enhancement of diplomatic relations with key partners, using Britain’s unique network of friendships, bonds and alliances and working bilaterally as well as multilaterally. That does not mean that we must be able to do all things at all times. We will need to be smarter about when and how we deploy power, which tasks we can undertake in alliance with others, and what capabilities we will need as a result. That must be based on a hard-headed assessment of the current security environment and the growing threats to peace and stability.

We live in a period in which direct military threats to UK territory are low, but in which the wider risks to our interests and way of life are growing. Over the coming decades, we could face weak or failing states creating new focal points for exportable Islamist terrorism that threatens our citizens and our allies, as we have seen in Yemen and Somalia. We could also face a nuclear-capable or nuclear-armed Iran destabilising Shi’a-Sunni and Arab-Persian fault lines, as well as those with Israel and the rest of the world. That could create an uncontrollable cycle of nuclear proliferation and, at worst, the erosion of the post-Hiroshima taboo against nuclear use by both Governments and terrorists. Elsewhere, we could see the emergence of old or new regional powers and the return of state-versus-state competition and confrontation. More immediately, competition for energy and other resources, including fresh water, could take on a military nature.

It is conceivable that we will negotiate the next half century without confronting any of those risks—I certainly hope so—but it is equally possible that the UK could face security policy decisions relating to any or all such risks during the course of the next Parliament. That is the reality of the world in which we live, and we must break away from the recent habit of planning for the best-case scenario and then hoping the worst never happens. Unlike what happened during the cold war, we cannot be confident about how and how quickly such trends may evolve. I shall therefore conduct a thorough stocktake of our contingency plans in the months ahead.

Of course, responding to such events would not be for Britain alone. Britain’s relationship with the United States will remain critical for our national security; it is the UK’s most important and prized strategic relationship.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your weather eye, Madam Deputy Speaker—a new dawn, if not a red dawn.

Anyway, let me turn to the question at hand, which concerns the strategic defence and security review. I do not want to deal with some of the things that ought to be in the review; I would like to return to the discussion about how we are going to conduct it. It seems to me that we are talking about a collection of reviews. There has been much talk about, for example, the discussions that we have had in the past about the strategic nuclear deterrent and other things. As far as the strategic nuclear deterrent and the last discussion that we had on it are concerned, I can say as a member of the Defence Committee at the time—there are other members in the Chamber today—that we had to fight to have that discussion in the first place. We produced three reports—in order to do what? To inform a discussion; so there must be scrutiny.

We have heard about scrutiny of the current nuclear deterrent review. As I understood it—there are people here who can correct me on this—the coalition document says that it has been agreed, quite rightly, that

“the renewal of Trident should be scrutinised to ensure value for money.”

I thought that that would mean scrutiny of the process as it went along, but it appears today that it means a one-off shot. I am sure that there are Liberal Democrat Members who will be somewhat surprised, as I was, that this scrutiny will not form part of an ongoing process of deciding where we are. I thought that the debate about whether we should have a strategic defence review was a debate about possibly having one at the start of every Parliament. Over the past 10 years, we have effectively been having a series of strategic defence reviews, but in an ad hoc and piecemeal way, without taking a strategic approach.

In “On War”, Clausewitz said that strategy is more like an art than anything else. What is the art? It is the art of timing. Knowing what to do and how to do it can be the science; knowing when to do it is the question, and that is what we should address. In doing that, we also have to open the process up to some form of scrutiny. We are talking about a strategic review, apparently of both security and defence, and it was the Secretary of State who talked about the MOD’s contribution to that discussion. That assumes that we will therefore have a Foreign Office contribution and a Home Office contribution as well, with all the different elements coming together. I hope so, and I hope someone is going to explain to me the sequence of events by which we can scrutinise not only the strategic nuclear deterrent, but all the elements that make up what counts as strategic or otherwise.

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend is making entirely appropriate points, but does he share my concern about the time scale and the fact that the SDSR and the comprehensive spending review seem to be on top of each other? Which will take priority—the MOD or the Treasury?

[Mr Havard]

I could give my answer, but it is not mine that is important, is it? What is important is the question, and as I understand it, based on published coalition documents, the position is this:

“The parties commit to holding a full Strategic Security and Defence Review… alongside the Spending Review with strong involvement of the Treasury”.

[Alison Seabeck]

Strong.

[Mr Havard]

I bet there will be strong involvement from the Treasury, but is that involvement just about the costs, or will it also consider other things? The statement I quoted refers to a review conducted “alongside”; it does not say that the parties commit to “having a review of the nuclear deterrent by July” and it does not actually say that they commit to “determining the whole of the strategic defence review before the comprehensive spending review”, but that seems to be precisely what is said in the agreement. I am most confused about what the exact sequence of all these events will be, because if proper scrutiny is not allowed for, there will be a democratic deficit. After all, legislative change could be required. One would have thought that it was a good idea to have pre-legislative scrutiny—we agreed that in the past, but now it has apparently been forgotten. One would have thought that it was a good idea for the various Select Committees to be involved. That was supposed to happen in the new Parliament.

This was supposed to be the new dawn, if I may use the pun again, whereby Parliament, and not just the Front-Bench team, would have an important role in the process. [Interruption.] I am asked, “Where are the speakers?” A good question. I have been in this Parliament for a number of years and taken a strong interest in defence, yet there are some defence debates that I have not bothered to attend. Let me explain why—because I was not going to sit here for six hours to get three minutes to speak. We debated the whole matter of the replacement of the nuclear deterrent in six hours, and two hours of that were taken up with a ping-pong Punch and Judy show at the front. Back Benchers who had an interest in the matter were not allowed to speak because the great and the good came in for that debate and they were given priority in the pecking order. What we need to do is to look at the process: it is not just process in the Ministry of Defence that needs looking at, but the processes here. We need to scrutinise them, and having the McKinsey book of boys consultancy, or whatever, applied in the MOD is not going to hack that. Well, the Foreign Secretary was trained by that book, so presumably he can make a contribution to it all, but that is not going to be important for the public’s understanding.

If we are truly committed to taking people with us when it comes to a serious set of choices, we have to address the public, and we have to provide them with information—ground truth, that is what we need here. This is not a party issue. It is about information, reality and understanding. The Government are effectively claiming that, at last, we have an integrated and coherent process that deals with the issues and lays out the involvement of all the different Departments—but they should do it, not just claim it. From what I have heard today and from how I see the sequencing of events, they will not, in fact, be doing that. It will still be a case, as mentioned earlier, of working in silos, with each individual service doing its bit. The rubber heels at the MOD will do their bit, and everyone else will do their bit—and it will be in bits, and no matter how high they are piled up, bits do not make a strategy.

This issue is too important for such an approach. We are at the beginning of a period of change. The Government are setting an agenda for a generation and committing money that will be spent in 30 years’ time. The Government know that: they know it intellectually, but they do not seem to know it in terms of how process works. They can deny it as much as they like, but the strategic nuclear deterrent will have to become part of a review. Put it in; do it properly; do it comprehensively. That sort of thing happens with DFID and when we go into Afghanistan—the comprehensive approach. Well, this is a comprehensive approach with large parts missing; that is what this SDSR is about.

I plead with the Front-Bench team to look back—or, rather, to step back—and consider the timing of events. It was argued earlier that we do not have to do all of this by a week next Wednesday; and we do not have to do it in a six-hour discussion, in which most of the people here, who represent the real people outside, will not be able to participate. That shows the dysfunctional level to which this Parliament has got to, and I thought that that was exactly the sort of dysfunctional activity that we were meant to be changing. Government Members have that opportunity, because they govern the debate; there are no Back-Bench opportunities to influence that yet. Perhaps that is something that those engaged in the discussion over Back Benchers and Parliament should try to change. Unless and until that debate takes place, whether it is prompted by the Government Front-Bench team or whether it is forced on them by those in others parts of the House, it will not be a real one.