Strategic Defence and Security Review

Denis MacShane Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I associate myself absolutely with the remarks that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) made about Wootton Bassett? Let me also add my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for securing such an important debate at such an important time. I also commend the Defence Committee Chair, the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), on his speech, on the Committee report that he led and, if I may say so, on making me welcome and part of the process, as a new member of the Committee and a new Member of the House.

I want to build on some of the things that have been said. It is important to make the point that Members on both sides of the House should learn from our recent history in this area under Governments of both colours. I should also like to press those in the new Government on how important it is that they should live up to the standards that they set for themselves in opposition. It is the case that successive Governments allowed the equipment programme to grow. That was not the preserve simply of the previous Government, although we have to recognise that it did grow, in part as a response to conflicts that no one seriously predicted at the time, but also because of our commitment to the Gray report, notwithstanding the important point made about that earlier. There is a need to correct that in the strategic defence and security review, but we, too, recognised that the correction needed to happen. It is important that the new Government go into the process with the right approach, which is why it is alarming that this does not necessarily seem to be happening and why the report that the Committee published this week is so critical, as was reflected in the right hon. Gentleman’s speech.

The point about not making commitments in opposition that no Government can afford has been amply set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the shadow Secretary of State, in relation to helicopters and the size of the Army. I do not think that the point needs to be added to further, but I hope that we get a commitment from the Minister in winding up that the Department has secured from the Treasury what it needs to be able to take a long-term view. It is no secret that the Secretary of State has been pressing to be given a 10-year spending envelope in which to make decisions, in recognition of the fact that if cuts are made too gravely in the early years, enormous capability will be lost, when the same size of budget reductions spread over 10 years could deliver a massively different profile.

It is fair to say that the Secretary of State has privately indicated that he thought that he had assurances on that commitment. However, given this debate and the obvious uncertainty over the Trident successor programme, which has been touched on and on which I shall comment shortly, it is important that the Department should set out whether it has indeed secured that commitment from the Treasury. Reference has been made to this in different ways, but whatever the outcome of the review, it is also critical that our prized defence industry maintains its capacity to deliver for our armed forces, as well as supporting our manufacturing industry and the many important high-skilled jobs across the country.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

One does not think of my constituency as being a big arms-producing centre, yet there are four Rotherham firms that are suppliers to the Astute submarine programme, along with about two dozen altogether in South Yorkshire, including Sheffield Forgemasters. We need to make it clear that if the cuts happen and the submarines are no longer to be built in Barrow, it is not just Barrow that will be affected, but the entire northern manufacturing and engineering base, which already faces serious cuts with the Sheffield Forgemasters scandal. I therefore wish my hon. Friend well as he defends submarine-building, which also contributes to my constituency’s economy.

[John Woodcock]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am grateful to him for that point. He mentioned the firms in his patch in Rotherham. It is indeed striking that in the supply chain for the Astute submarine programme alone, which is a significant but relatively small part of the overall defence industry in the United Kingdom, there are, by my reckoning, more than 1,400 firms, spread over 1,500 areas of the country, that contribute in some way—either directly, because they are defence contractors or small or medium-sized enterprises, or indirectly, in that although they are not part of the defence industry, they none the less get important business from the Astute programme.

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[Mr MacShane]

Would we need politicians?

[Bob Stewart]

We certainly would not need politicians.

Everyone is a little wicked, even Opposition Members. We have a problem in this country. We have a £38 million debt in the defence budget at the moment, and we would need an SDSR regardless of which Government were in power. I am not blaming anyone; I am just giving the facts. We also have a big problem because the SDSR—

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[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), whose maiden speech I heard. That one was just as eloquent. Rudyard Kipling, of course, lost his son in the first war, and in his later poetry, he was not so strong on militarism. That great poem, of course, was not in any way militaristic.

I want to give one figure to the House this afternoon— 2% plus a bit—because the idea that our overall defence budget expressed as a share of gross domestic product, which is a pretty good measure, will fall below 2% makes me nervous. That puts us in the same division as Spain, Italy, Luxembourg and other such countries, and it worries me because we have consistently made an important contribution since the end of the second world war to the notion that the democratic world is prepared to arm itself. It would prefer not to fight, but it can when necessary. As the Romans put it, if we want peace, we should prepare for war, or at least invest for it. If we fall below 2%, we will no longer be able to discharge that responsibility, which is common to the whole democratic world.

I am rather glad that the Defence Secretary is not here today, because I am not sure he would have agreed with the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), who said that this should be a non-political debate. The idea of the Defence Secretary, who has to carry his own non-aggression pact with him wherever he goes, being non-political is a touching concept. I hope that all Members of the House will hold him—I am sure that it is also his wish; I ask not to be misunderstood—to not letting our spending fall below 2%.

What we have not heard much of in this debate, after the introduction by the Chair of the Defence Committee, is the word “strategy”. What is our strategy? The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who has left the Chamber, is so keen for his country to leave the United Kingdom, but he is even keener for the English taxpayer to keep ensuring that there is investment in his constituency. That kind of constituency plea bargaining is justified politically, but it does not contribute to what should be the strategic choices that we have to make.

I put it to the House that one such choice is on Afghanistan. The hon. Member for South Dorset said that we are at war, but we are not; we are fighting a conflicted situation. We have declared war on nobody and we have mobilised nobody. We built the Mulberry harbour in a year and a half because deficit spending in world war two went through the roof in a way that is not even imaginable today; today we have not got the money or the will to do that. I suggest gently to the House that we need a clearer message on Afghanistan. No leadership is coming from the United States; there is talk about being in Afghanistan until 2015 and then it is all over. There was a lot of confusion during the first period of government between what the Secretary of State for Defence was saying and what the Prime Minister was saying, and it is important that the politicians get back the control of all these questions from the generals. I hope that we find a way—it is not unknown in our great and glorious island’s history—to say, “Enough is enough. Come home.” That is not scuttling; that is sensible survival politics.

Do we have an understanding of the new threats to our country? One hon. Member—I believe it was the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles)—mentioned cyber-attacks and I completely agree on that. But into which part of the defence strategy does dealing with them belong? We have a National Security Council, but is it capable of giving orders to the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and Her Majesty’s Treasury? The answer is no, which is why the director of the NSC is getting out as fast as he can to return to the diplomatic service. The creation of the NSC—this is where I disagree with one of the conclusions of this excellent Select Committee report—is not providing the answer to what we need.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

On the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about cyber-attacks, I wonder whether he, like me, was able to catch the excellent Radio 4 programme during the summer recess that discussed the future of the Royal Air Force and how the RAF was best placed to deal with cyber-attacks.

[Mr MacShane]

I was not, but I am nervous of service patriotism. I understand it, but I wonder whether the RAF should also have military regiments, whether the Army should also have an Army air force and whether there is not some rationalisation that could be applied.

On the question of the nuclear deterrent, I entirely agree with the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and others. If Britain substantially reduces its nuclear deterrent capability, others may be tempted to step into the breach. We are lucky that in one of the richest regions of the world only two mature democracies —France and Britain—have a nuclear capability. If either of us were to let go or significantly reduce our nuclear deterrent profile, what other major European power might be tempted to feel that it might need one?

[Mr Jenkin]

Poland.

[Mr MacShane]

From a sedentary position, the hon. Gentleman makes a crack about Poland. [Interruption.] I have a lot of Polish background and I would not suggest that it is very helpful vis-à-vis Russia to talk up any question of Poland’s becoming a nuclear power. It is far better that we are one and that the French remain one.

[Mr Jenkin]

Exactly.

[Mr MacShane]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me.

We have the new rising powers in the world that do not respect the rules of democracy, whereas at the same time the democratic world is leaderless. President Obama, whom I like and admire—he is in my political family—is not a strategic world leader. There is no European leader who is a strategic world leader. The Chinese know what they want, the Russians know what they want, and Iran and North Korea know what they want. Many of the so-called Islamic republics know what they want. However, do we know what we want?

That is why the debate is important—not just in terms of my constituency interests, or firing ranges in the Western Isles or the absolutely correct need to talk with trade unions and others in the industry, or to help our wounded soldiers when they come back, for which the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) so eloquently appealed. It is about a bigger strategic set of choices. We have to lift our horizons and think about the new threats not just to our country but to the wider set of values of ourselves and our allies. I hope that the Government—I wish them well—can rise to that challenge. If they cannot, the House must make them.

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[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) for the passion and sincerity that he regularly brings to our debates about defence and his excellent suggestion to reduce costs by depending more on reserves. It is obvious, as I shall say in a moment, that we cut equipment or cut manpower. That is it. If we cut equipment, we reduce future capability; if we cut manpower intelligently—I am afraid that the civil service cuts must come before armed forces cuts, and substantial cuts in the civil service must be made—it can be rebuilt much more quickly. We can maintain reserves of manpower, but we cannot retain reserves of equipment that we have not built. I commend his suggestion to the House.

The right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) mentioned strategy. Let me say first that the Defence Committee has alerted us to the startlingly compressed timetable for the review. We know that there is only one reason for that. It is to fit into the spending round. There is no doubt that we are in danger of having an FDSR instead of an SDSR—a financial defence and security review rather than a strategic defence and security review.

[Mr MacShane]

On whether we cut expenditure on manpower or equipment, does the hon. Gentleman feel any of my concern that a great deal of DFID money goes to countries with massive military expenditure that represents a disproportionate level of their national income? I wonder whether we should look a little more closely at whether DFID money should go to prop up the military machines in India, Pakistan and some of the African states.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his suggestion, but I am not going to be drawn into that. I want to return to his mention of strategy. I am Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, which is conducting an inquiry entitled “Who does UK grand strategy?” We have had evidence from the Foreign Secretary and this morning the Chief of the Defence Staff gave evidence. There is a widespread feeling, expressed by the CDS himself, that we have lost the art of strategic thinking.

An article in the RUSI Journal by General Paul Newton and others states:

“The problem with the UK ‘debate’ on strategy, and defence matters more generally, is that for many observers there does not seem to be one.”

I am afraid that that is the vulnerability of this defence review—that it is being conducted in the absence of a coherent strategy. As the CDS said, we have lost the “habit of strategic thought”—the kind that looks 20 years ahead and asks what sort of country we want to be. The decisions that are made in the SDSR will define what sort of country we are in 10, 15 or 20 years’ time. It seems as though we are following Sir Humphrey’s adage about producing Government documents: “Always get rid of the difficult bit in the title—it does less harm than in the text.” Thus strategy is referred to in the title, and not to be dealt with in the substance of the text.

Yes, deficit reduction is the main effort of Government under the present circumstances; nobody in the defence world resents or disputes that. Indeed, economic security is one of the fundamental qualities of a secure state. However, the SDSR should concentrate on maintaining what I call minimum recoverable capability, so that however far we pare down current capabilities, they are recoverable in the event of an emergency. It is a risky business in this world. In the 1930s, we planned for a three-year warning for going to war, yet three years was hardly enough. As was pointed out in evidence to our Committee, it was the fighters—the Hurricanes and the Spitfires—coming into service at just the critical moment that saved this country from annihilation.

That is the kind of risk analysis that has to be made in this defence review. If the debate is about what capability we are employing and what capability we do not need because we never use it, that misses the point. Defence is about preparing for what we do not expect or anticipate. It is about being ready to use capabilities that we hope never to use, the strategic deterrent being a case in point. The danger of the SDSR is that it is being cost-driven—that it will permanently relegate this country from the first division of global powers, and that we are losing capabilities that once lost will never be recovered. We nearly did that in 1982. Paradoxically, it was the invasion of the Falklands that saved us and completely changed the situation. In fact, it brought back into being the whole concept of expeditionary warfare, which was a very alien concept in cold war terms.

The CDS referred to the financial envelope that the Ministry of Defence has been given. That sends shivers down my spine. The Treasury cannot be allowed to define £500 million spent on defence in terms exactly equivalent to £500 million spent on quangos and bureaucracy. The saving of £500 million on defence will cost far more strategically to this country than that of £500 million on quangos and bureaucracy. That qualitative judgment must be understood.

We have talked about Trident, although perhaps, for the sake of brevity, today is not the time to have that debate. If we delay Trident, we are not only doing something extraordinary that the Treasury has decried and despaired about so often in relation to defence, but putting off a programme that will cost more. If we are trying to get the deficit down over a 20-year period, then adding to costs in five years’ time will not reduce the deficit. It is like the pension problem whereby we store up future liabilities instead of facing up to them today. It is better to spend the money today than store up a bigger liability later on. We also run the risk of reopening the debate and creating an atmosphere in which cancellation becomes an option, and eventually an inevitability because of the cost increase.

If we are going to have a deterrent, then it is not about firing those weapons but about being ready and evidently prepared and determined to do so if necessary. It is about resolve, intent and sending signals to the wider world about what sort of country we are and how determined we are to defend our interests and our allies. If we falter on the upgrade of Trident, we will falter on the intention and resolve to defend our country, our wider interests and our allies. That is why we should not go down that road.

The alternative that we face in the defence review is Trident crowding out everything else, because there would be a bulge in expenditure on the procurement budget between 2015 and 2024. We would lose the aircraft carriers, the fast jets, the joint strike fighter, the transport aircrafts or the tanks, and they all have to be included in the mix. The problem is that the relationship between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence has become dysfunctional. The MOD is evidently the most dysfunctional Department in Whitehall and became so under the previous Government. If I were in the Treasury, I would be exasperated at the constant moving of the goalposts, the additional costs, the cost over-runs and the incompetence that we have seen and that the Gray report exposed.

The Prime Minister will have to intervene in that dispute between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, to safeguard vital defence capability, despite the MOD’s incompetence, and give it a chance to sort matters out. Otherwise, we will finish up abandoning vital capacity, and non-economic strategic considerations will simply be ignored.

Perhaps the real SDSR will start after the spending review, because this SDSR has such a short time scale. The real strategic thinking—the installation of capacity for strategic thinking throughout Whitehall—has to start after this SDSR, and then we have to rebuild on the foundations that are left after the spending round. But what this spending round must not do is permanently relegate this country to the second division.