Armed Forces

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) for securing this debate. In speaking this afternoon I feel a huge degree of deference to those in the room who have military experience, but we need to reach out to the public if we are to have any discussion of the future of our armed forces. In Walsall North we have three remembrance monuments: in Willenhall, Bloxwich and Short Heath. I will work with the Royal British Legion to ensure that we continue the Remembrance Day parades in those areas, although unfortunately the police are no longer agreeing to road closures for those areas.

Things have changed hugely since the world wars. At the time when I was born, we had Operation Banner in Northern Ireland. I understand that we had 21,000 troops stationed in Northern Ireland at that time. Sadly, 700 of those military personnel lost their lives owing to paramilitary attacks. Coming forward closer to home, the Good Friday agreement and lengthy diplomacy means that now we have only hundreds of troops there instead of thousands.

What is the state of the British military in terms of troop numbers? I read an interesting article from 2014 in The Daily Telegraph at the weekend that made a perhaps unfortunate comparison between the number of troops and the number of hairdressers that we have in the UK. At that time we had 185,000 hairdressers, but only approximately 160,000 troops. That feels like a disproportionate balance to me. Where are we today? The papers that came to us in preparation for this meeting suggest that we have not reached the 2020 targets, although we are trying hard to do that, and the adverts tell me that I have people who were born in Willenhall and Bloxwich, but have been made in the Royal Navy.

Our troops are operating in 80 different areas around the world. People in Walsall North will be familiar with some of those areas, such as the Falklands, but perhaps not so familiar with Bahrain, other than as a venue for the Grand Prix. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot has written about Bahrain, and I have read his papers. I understand that we have recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of Anglo-Bahraini relations, and the port there is the second busiest area of activity for the Royal Navy outside of Portsmouth.

We deploy troops around the world, but the nature of combat is changing. On 7 October 2001, American forces used the first drone strike two months after 9/11. They have subsequently argued about whose fault it was that it hit the wrong target. The RAF took delivery of 10 drones in 2007. For the benefit of people in Walsall North, I point out that those drones cost approximately £10 million each and fire Hellfire missiles at a cost of £120,000 each. That is sophisticated but expensive equipment. They can fly for 30 hours and can be operated by people thousands of miles away. However, they are no replacement for boots on the ground. We cannot over-exaggerate the reassurance that local people in war zones around the world will feel from having the benefit of our brilliant, brave and well-trained troops offering them reassurance on their safety for the future. The first rule for any Government is that they must protect their residents. We must ensure that we provide sufficient funding for them to do so adequately.