Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

First and foremost, the key thing about our ships is to make sure that they are available to use. As the Secretary of State for Defence, I want them on the seas, able to project power and supporting our allies and friends. One of the problems in the past, which goes back to the issue of overambition and underfunding, was that we had lots on paper but if you went to Portsmouth you found a number of them—you still do—tied up in a sorry state. This Command Paper will ensure that the new ships, and indeed the existing Type 45s and some of the Type 23s, will be more available, more deployed and more ready to help Britain. The new ships are going to be made on the Clyde and in Rosyth, part of the United Kingdom where, together, collective defence provides jobs for thousands of people, and, where possible, we will use as many British parts and as much British equipment as we can.

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

As a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, I am under no illusion about the evolving nature of the security threats that we face, but could I ask the Secretary of State about the reduction in the number of members of the Army? At the Conservative party manifesto launch in 2019, the Prime Minister, in response to the journalist Tom Newton Dunn, said:

“We will not be cutting our armed forces in any form. We will be maintaining the size of our armed forces because we are increasing funding for them”.

After the announcement today, does the Secretary of State regret the Prime Minister promising this to the British people at the last general election?

[Mr Wallace]

No, I do not. If the hon. Lady wants to know one of the reasons that we have taken a slightly different position, it is Operation Spring Shield, which relates to the Turkish incursion into north-west Syria. As she is a member of the ISC, perhaps she should look at the impact of that type of change in tactics and use of technology on a conventional armoured force. It became blatantly clear that unless we modernised and updated our land forces in a proper way, they would be deeply vulnerable to those types of attacks. That is the responsibility I have to protect the men and women operating that equipment so that I can deploy them, and I will not take it lightly. If I have to have a few less people to make sure they are better protected, better equipped and better deployable, but also more lethal, that is a decision I would take, and I am sure that most Members in this House would.