Defence

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend has pre-empted a passage a little later in my speech, in which I suggest that those right hon. and hon. Members on the Labour Benches who want to see more money go into defence might first persuade their own Front Benchers to follow our lead and ensure that we get more money into it. I am very concerned about the apparent failure of the Labour party to match our funding commitment. Labour Members are being incredibly evasive about funding. In addition to not confirming whether they will do the 2.5% in the next six years—we look forward to hearing whether they confirm that—they are also promising, or perhaps I should say threatening, a review of defence. Our enemies will waste no time in putting the UK in their sights if they think that the next thing that would happen is a multi-year review—a waste of time and money that should instead be spent on our brave servicemen and women. Labour’s apparent refusal to follow our lead and back our fully funded spending plans would decimate our armed forces by cutting up to £75 billion from defence.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Why does the Secretary of State think that Paul Johnson, in an article on Monday 29 April, said:

“What annoyed me was not the commitment…”—

to the 2.5%—

“It was all about the misleading and opaque way in which the additional spending was presented. When it wanted to make it look big, the Government claimed it would boost spending by £75 billion; when it wanted to appear fiscally responsible… It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes, or even the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to see that there might be something not quite consistent about these claims.”

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that the way this is presented is entirely the usual way for the Treasury to present increases in spending. If I take him back to the previous cash boost for defence—I think it was £24 billion and it was described, I think, as being over five years—it was presented on exactly the same basis, and I do not remember the hon. Gentleman making the same point then. Regardless of the numbers, surely the point is this: will the Labour party commit to this timeline?

Labour Members said that they wanted to get to 2.5%, and that they would do it when conditions allow. We have now said that we know conditions will allow because of the management of the economy. Will they follow us, or will they send their Back Benchers out to criticise an increase, even though their own Front Benchers will not match it themselves? Perhaps we should not be surprised, given that the Leader of the Opposition, not once but twice backed Jeremy Corbyn—sorry, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—to be Prime Minister. The Leader of the Opposition proclaims his support for our nuclear deterrent, yet he has stacked his Front Bench with anti-nuclear campaigners—I counted 11 who voted against Trident—while he goes up to Barrow and claims he is all in favour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grant Shapps]

I will be as diplomatic as possible: the Liberal Democrats asked us to investigate a range of options, and I am very pleased that the one we ended up with was the four-submarine continuous at-sea deterrent.

We are investing £41 billion in our next generation of the Dreadnought fleet, and investing in our replacement UK sovereign nuclear warhead as well.

[Derek Twigg]

The Secretary of State mentioned the Command Paper. Page 89, in paragraph 10, refers to

“protecting ourselves…against attack from the skies”.

We know from what has happened in Ukraine, and more recently in Israel, how important our air defence missile system is. The Command Paper continues:

“To counter these threats, we will step up our efforts to deliver an Integrated Air and Missile Defence approach.”

Can the Secretary of State tell us where we are with that?

[Grant Shapps]

I should point out that there are a wide number of differences for us, because within Nato—this relates to article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty—we are in a different region from, for example, Israel, which was recently attacked. We have a number of layered approaches to defending our skies, including the quick reaction alert. However, the hon. Gentleman will be interested to hear that we are working with our European friends and allies on a European sky shield to do something along the lines of what he has described. It should be understood, however, that there are considerations regardless of which direction we take, because, again, the money can only be spent once, and we would have to consider what else we were or were not going to achieve in defence. So we use a layered approach, but we are actively working on exactly what the Command Paper describes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

We are obviously living in a much more dangerous world and preparing for a potential war in Europe, which might involve our personnel at some point, not least, of course, in the support of Ukraine in her continual fight against Russia and Putin. All this adds up to a very serious situation.

I want to spend a couple of minutes on the point that we need to argue more forcefully for why the defence of our democratic, liberal way of life is so important, whatever shortcomings there might be in democracies. We need to reinforce the central tenets of free speech, liberty and the rule of law, as opposed to the alternative of dictatorship, gangsterism, brutal violence and the suppression of opposition that we have seen in other parts of the world. That is what we have to defend and fight for. We need to get our whole population prepared to play a part in ensuring our security and defending democracy and the basic principles that our great country stands for. There needs to be a change in mindset.

I think the Government and Parliament need to do a lot more to say why we need to spend more on defence and why we need to be prepared to deal with some very challenging situations, and possibly war. That is where we have failed to some extent, so we need to be much more up front with the British people. We know the threats and potential threats from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, and the destabilising activities going on in the middle east and parts of Africa at the moment by some of those countries, and they are causing serious concerns. This is why we need to set out to the British public why defence needs to be properly funded and our armed forces supported in a much more systematic way. We did know Russia’s intentions, and its intentions in invading Crimea in 2014 clearly told us that times had changed. We thought that had all disappeared with the cold war, but it had not. However, we did not prepare for this, having cut spending, and we must be prepared to provide the resources needed for our armed forces, because if we want to maintain peace, we have to do so from a position of strength.

The first duty of Government is to defend the security of our country, and I want to look at this Government’s record. The path pursued over the past 14 years has led to a weakening of the capability of our armed forces to warfight over a sustained period, and of course of their resilience. We have heard from the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), about the “hollowing out” of our armed forces, and we could not even put a warfighting division in the field at present. The Government’s failure to properly fund and the decision to cut the size of our armed forces, as well as the failure to stem the outflow from the armed forces and a defence procurement system that is broken, are putting the security of this country at risk and not preparing us for the threats, some of which I have outlined. If peace remains our goal, and it must be, we must be prepared to buy those resources.

Figures have been provided to me by the House of Commons Library. We have heard about cuts in defence expenditure during the coalition Government, but if we look at the whole period from 2010-11 to 2023-24, in both cash and real terms, the House of Commons Library figures show that spending has fallen by 1.2% at 2023-24 prices. So over the period of this Government, the record is that defence funding has actually fallen, no matter what they are doing now. It is just by coincidence that there is a general election coming up, and they have suddenly committed to a 2.5% increase.

Aside from the £3 billion that the Government have committed to military support for Ukraine, it is not clear exactly what the additional £5.4 billion of funding represents, because it has not yet been approved by Parliament or listed in any detail. On defence equipment, the increase in planned spending has been outstripped by a £65.7 billion—27%—rise in forecasted costs, which totalled £305.5 billion as of March 2023. This equates to a £19.6 billion funding shortfall based on central estimates, although the MOD estimates that the true shortfall could range from £7.6 billion to £29.8 billion if all the risks materialise. The National Audit Office scrutinises the equipment plan and publishes its own report alongside the MOD’s, and in recent years the NAO has assessed successive plans—I stress, successive plans—to be unaffordable.

I want to go into the size of the armed forces and the cuts that are taking place. Between January 2010 and January 2024, the size of the full-time UK armed forces decreased by around 50,000 personnel. The Army is now at its smallest, as some have said, since the Napoleonic wars. Both the RAF and the Royal Navy/Royal Marines are below target, by around 3,000 personnel and 1,500 personnel respectively.

The House of Commons Library has sent me a note on UK defence personnel, and it sets out that, in 2023, there was a 1% reduction in the number of personnel leaving the UK regular forces compared with the previous year, but there was also an 8% reduction in the number of people joining the armed forces. Overall, there was a negative flow of personnel, with 5,460 more personnel leaving the forces than joining. This compares with a net increase of 4,660 personnel in 2022. Voluntary outflow accounted for 60% of trained outflow from UK regular forces in 2023. The voluntary outflow rate is the number of trained personnel voluntarily leaving as a proportion of the average trained strength in the period. In 2023, the voluntary outflow rate was 6.4%, up from 6% in 2022. In its commentary published alongside the personnel statistics, the MOD says:

“There is no single reason why personnel leave on Voluntary Outflow, but the personnel who completed the Armed Forces Continuous Attitude Survey indicated reasons for leaving the Armed Forces included the impact of Service life on family and personal life and opportunities outside the Armed Forces.”

Again, the Government have no real plan to address this really challenging problem.

I want to refer briefly to the state of the reserve forces, which is a really serious concern at the moment, particularly where we get specialist grades coming into the reserve forces from civilian life. We have a real problem with recruiting and retaining those reserve forces. In January 2024 the total trained and untrained strength of UK reserve forces was 32,650—a decrease of 665 personnel, or minus 4.9%, compared with the year before. Outflow was higher than inflow for Army, maritime and RAF reserve forces in 2023. The number of reserve personnel continued to decline from a peak of around 37,400 in April 2021.

I know that the Minister has previously been questioned about this issue by my right hon. and hon. Friends, but we cannot get the information about pinch point grades that used to be available. Those are the specialist grades that are so important to maintaining the sustainability, competency and fighting power of the armed forces, and we are still trying to get more information about them. The Armed Forces Pay Review Body said in a 2023 report that

“there could be insufficient personnel with the right skills to deliver the outputs envisaged by the Integrated Review. We would welcome more data from MOD relating to these pinch point areas and what interventions MOD is planning to employ to address the issues.”

We in this House would welcome that data as well.

Our armed forces are running hot and being asked to do ever more without the resources they need. Resilience is a growing concern, not just for personnel, but for the ability to maintain and replenish losses in a Navy and Air Force that are much smaller in terms of ships and aircraft. The Defence Committee’s “Ready for War?” report said:

“It is a matter of national pride that whenever the Armed Forces are asked to carry out a task, they will find a way. It is to the credit of the Armed Forces that they have sustained this effort for so long. But overtasking has both a personal cost for service personnel and an opportunity cost for the UK. The increase in global instability has coincided with a period of decreasing recruitment and reduced industrial capacity, which requires sustained, long-term investment. The Government risks being unable to build true warfighting and strategic readiness because of the sheer pace of operations, which could threaten the security of the UK.”

We cannot continue like this. As I have said, we live in a dangerous and increasingly unstable world, and we need to move quickly to 2.5% of GDP being spent on defence. The Government have still not set out how they intend to get there: they have not given the details, and the figures they have quoted so far have been rubbished by independent analysis, as we have already seen. The fact remains that over the past 15 years this Government have put our security at risk through their underfunding of the armed forces and their cutting of personnel. That is another reason why the current Prime Minister and this Government need to go.