Strategic Defence and Security Review

Dan Byles Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Snap, Mr Deputy Speaker.

This has been a fascinating debate so far, and I pay tribute to Members on both sides of the House for interesting and at times well informed contributions. It is extremely important that Members take it upon themselves to learn about and understand defence and the military, especially as so many of them might not have direct experience of them. I have been impressed by many of the contributions that I have heard. I also know that many colleagues still wish to speak, so I shall try to keep my contribution brief.

I am grateful for the timing of this debate, as it comes only a few days after I attended a parade by the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers on Sunday in Nuneaton and Bedworth, a borough that covers part of my constituency. The regiment was being given the freedom of the borough, and it was greeted by thousands of local people who, as ever, showed it warmth and their great pride. I should like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my local regiment for its sterling work. I know that many young men from the regiment will be going to Afghanistan later this year, many of them for the first time, and I pay tribute to them.

The House will be aware that I was a regular officer before entering Parliament. Indeed, I left the Army to come into this place because I was concerned about the treatment and direction of the armed forces under the previous Government. I find myself in a quandary. I am here to be a champion of the armed forces, and it is clear that the SDSR will be very hard to swallow for many serving and retired soldiers, sailors and airmen, and for many others of us in the wider defence community. I confess that I am concerned—about what I read in the press and what I hear from former colleagues who are still serving. I think that there will be a significant reform of our armed forces and that many sacred cows will be slain.

As a former soldier, I do not want the armed forces to be reduced in size or capability. My instinct is to oppose significant reductions in formations and capabilities, with which I trained, and which I am used to, but—it is an important “but”—that is my heart talking. There is no room, in a subject as vital as the defence of the realm, for a misty-eyed, romantic old soldier like me—and perhaps Colonel Bob—to try to preserve things as he knew and loved them. That approach damaged our ability to defend ourselves in the past. Historically, our armed forces have been most at risk when they remained resistant to change.

During the first world war, contrary to popular perception, the British Army was highly innovative. We invented the tank and were among the first to develop the use of combat aircraft. After the great war, great British military thinkers, such as J. C. Fuller and Sir Basil Liddell Hart, led the way in developing the concept of mechanised warfare. By 1927, the British Army put together the prototype combined arms formation, called the Experimental Mechanised Force. It was arguably the world’s first modern armoured brigade—well ahead of its time.

So what happened? By 1929, the force, despite a successful programme of exercises and tests, was disbanded. The old guard, resistant to change, won the day. Consequently, while Germany was rearming throughout the 1930s, Britain still had four cavalry regiments, equipped with horses, as late as 1939. Germany had learned the lessons of mechanised warfare and prepared for the next war, while, as had happened so often in the past, we were too slow to move on from cherished weapons and tactics. As a result, we lost the first half of the second world war, leading to the humiliating retreat from Dunkirk and the surrender to Germany of the western European mainland for several years. The British military has always had to adapt to a changing world. It must. When it does that too slowly and too reluctantly, more soldiers die.

In my time as a soldier, my first unit was 19 Airmobile Field Ambulance. Just two years into my career, it no longer existed. When I became adjutant, it was of a unit called 3 Close Support Medical Regiment, which did not exist when I trained at Sandhurst only a few years previously. My initial commission was with the light infantry—no regiment now serves under that name.

We have been fighting two difficult and bloody wars for many years. We have done that with overstretched and tired solders and—initially, at least—inadequate equipment, vehicles and support helicopters. Yet throughout that time, we have continued with questionable and poorly managed defence procurement programmes costing billions of pounds. I will not rehearse the litany of disastrous procurement projects. We all know about the Typhoon and its problems, the A400M, which has been mentioned, the future rapid effect system debacle and the Type 45s, which have ended up costing £1 billion apiece.

Our long-term procurement programmes are a shambles and our forces are not balanced in a planned manner, according to a hard-headed assessment of the capabilities that we require. They have evolved as a result of historical equipment programmes and from a strategic defence review that took place more than 10 years ago, before 9/11. It was never properly funded and used defence planning assumptions that we have never met throughout my time in the service.

We have inherited a Ministry of Defence that I make no apologies for describing as not fit for purpose, and a £38 billion black hole in defence spending. Defence is not in good health. The strategic defence and security review is long overdue. Although my heart shudders with trepidation at what may come, my head tells me that change is badly needed to put defence back on a balanced and sustainable footing.