Defence Transformation

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

It would be extremely unfortunate were there to be any going back on the uplift that we have had as part of our approach to the next decade. I do not see any chance of that happening given the Treasury’s willingness to engage with the MOD once the MOD was able to show that it could manage its budget better and assess its costs better, and given that the National Audit Office will in future be making a very strict audit of what we do regarding our finances.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

At Hull’s freedom parade on Saturday for 150 (Yorkshire) Transport Regiment, several of the Army vehicles that were going by were plastered with recruitment posters. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) said, the Secretary of State said in the House two weeks ago that there would be no further cuts. When exactly did he decide that he wanted to have an Army that would fill Wembley stadium with probably several thousand seats left over?

[Dr Fox]

What I want to achieve—I go back to this point again—is a complete Army of reserves and regulars that is genuinely deployable. We have to increase the deployable number because that is what gives us our military effect. There is no point in having bigger armed forces when the budget does not allow us to fully train and equip them, because it is the military effect that we need to preserve. The real betrayal was the Labour party under-equipping our armed forces, as it did so often when it was in government, not the proposals I have put forward today.