Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Brazier(8 years, 3 months ago)
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David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)
8. What steps he is taking to develop defence soft power and influence.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Julian Brazier)
The strategic defence and security review made defence engagement a funded, core MOD task. We are building our capacity to address global security concerns at source by influencing partner countries. This includes strengthening the defence attaché network and developing a professional defence engagement career stream, to attract the very best. Furthermore, each Army adaptable brigade is now aligned to a specific region for training and influence purposes.
Sir Edward Leigh
Will the Minister make a comment about increasing our security in the Baltic region in relation to soft power?
In the context of soft power, may I apologise on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the Chair of the Defence Committee? My right hon. Friend cannot be here this afternoon because he is attending a memorial service for Lieutenant Commander David Balme, the hero who boarded U-110 during the war and got the code books and the Enigma machine out. They were then sent to Bletchley Park, which interests me because my parents met at Bletchley at that time. Lieutenant Commander Balme was a hero who probably shortened the war, and I hope that the Minister will pay tribute to him.
Mr Brazier
We are very conscious of the importance of the Baltics. Most of the ministerial team, including the Secretary of State and me, have been to visit them. My hon. Friend will be well aware of the air patrols and everything that we have done there, and of our programme of exercises.
As for Lieutenant Commander Balme, Churchill once famously said that the only campaign that kept him continuously awake at night was the convoy campaign in the western Atlantic. Without Bletchley Park, we would almost certainly have lost it.
Defence Reforms
Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Brazier(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Sir Edward Leigh
I agree with my hon. Friend. When I arrived in the House we had an annual Navy debate, which was the only debate in which Mr Bonner Pink—a great man who represented Portsmouth—spoke in the course of an entire year, so important was it. We greatly respect my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, but we would like the Secretary of State to be present on these occasions and in these most important debates.
We are, of course, sympathetic to Defence Ministers, and we know the intolerable pressure they have been put under. I will not get into a debate about the £35 billion black hole, just in case the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) intervenes on me, but as we know, the money has to come from nowhere—or rather, from somewhere—and difficult decisions must be made. I hope that was not a Freudian slip, Madam Deputy Speaker, and by the way, welcome to the Chair. Thank you for calling me; you are doing wonderfully well so far.
We all know the pressure that those on the Front Benches are under, but that does not absolve them from answering the central question in this debate. We can argue about the relative costs of reservists compared with regular forces, but we cannot deny that the previous Secretary of State made a pledge to the Chair of the Defence Committee that we would not reduce the Regular Army unless we were sure we could recruit these reservists. That is the nub of this debate, and we must not get lost in the detail. We must keep our eyes firmly focused on the issue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) has played a distinguished part in this debate, and his independent commission concluded:
“Our Reserve Forces are in Decline.”
Why are they in decline? The commission concluded:
“We have failed to modernise Reservist Roles.”
We must ask my hon. Friend, and the Minister, whether we can increase the burdens we place on reservists when we are still modernising their role. The 2013 MOD White Paper “Reserves in the Future Force 2020: Valuable and Valued” was produced in response.
Mr Brazier
The central point was that for the past few years reserves have been used exclusively as a part-time personnel service with no command opportunities for officers whatever. That has now changed, and as a result we have a decent proposition.
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill
Debate between Edward Leigh and Julian Brazier
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for making such a powerful speech. In the last few weeks, on a very different subject—a deportation case—we have seen another example of the courts making it clear that neither the views expressed by Ministers nor a resolution of the House are enough to persuade them, when they have taken a fixed view on a human rights point. Only legislation can pin this down.
Mr Leigh
Absolutely. The courts made that quite clear recently.
Before somebody leaps to their feet and tries to make out that we are defending people being beastly to gay people in the workplace, let me deal with this important point and make a statement of the obvious: protecting freedom of conscience does not mean protecting the freedom to be beastly to anybody. Equality law protects sexual orientation, gender, race and belief, but no one would say it provides for the right to be horrid to people who disagree with on any of these things, so there is no danger of that happening with new clause 6.