Strategic Defence and Security Review

Eric Joyce Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

I find it slightly puzzling to hear my right hon. Friend tell the Secretary of State for Defence to stay on message. Does he not think that what is going on is in fact more interesting than he suggests? There seems to be some ambivalence on the Conservative side about what we are doing in Afghanistan. It is the Opposition, from my perspective at least, who seem to be more determined to pursue the strategy we had before, and that might mean we are more closed-minded than they are.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I am not certain of that. I would not go as far as my hon. Friend. I have, however, seen unfortunate headlines when, as a result of things that were being said, the press were able to suggest that the Government were propagating some kind of exit strategy. I do not believe that that is so. I believe that the Government are pursuing the same strategy that we pursued. I believe that they accept that we must stay in Afghanistan until such time as the Afghan forces themselves are able to defend their own country, and that they will not take any precipitate decision to reduce our force levels in that country before that happens. I certainly hope that that is the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Lab)]

I listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt). She certainly advanced a sophisticated argument for the interests of the Navy and she should be congratulated on listening so carefully to her predecessor, Sir Roger. However, I am not sure about all of that knights on chargers stuff—I am always a bit sceptical about all that. I thought she was a bit scary. It was nice that she referred to my colleague and her predecessor, Sarah McCarthy-Fry. I know that everyone who serves a constituency with a big military naval or air force interest must largely follow that trend, but I think that the world we are in leads us to leave that behind. Today’s debate leads us to reflect on the fact that many people, including Opposition Members, have to consider not only their constituents’ interests but the fact that we are in a complex and difficult time financially and that we have to look to defend the realm in ways that leave sectional interests behind. However, I thought that the hon. Lady’s speech was super. I can imagine her on a horse, but I am trying to stay legal here. It was a tremendous speech. There have been a number of really good opening speeches tonight. I have probably said enough about that, except I must say that I thought her comments about her predecessor were a bit acerbic.

I want to address two issues in the brief time available to me, starting with a quick word about Trident. My personal perspective is that Opposition Front Benchers are slightly constrained by the fact that we were in government until quite recently, so we cannot really put a proper Opposition perspective on things at the moment. That is simply the way it is. I am not being critical of Labour Front Benchers, who are all very good and who excelled as Defence Ministers. It is just the way things are: things change, we are now in opposition, and I think that our profile will change in some ways too.

It is bizarre to argue that we voted Trident through in 2007, so now it should be fine, which is essentially the Secretary of State’s position. There are many things that we voted for in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 on which the position will have changed, because, as I understand it, this Government have a different prospectus from the previous Government. The idea that Labour had that as a policy when in government and should therefore follow that line is not really an argument at all. The fact is that both the Conservatives and Labour are afraid of Trident as a truly political issue, and this is not really a defence issue, but a political issue. The Conservatives are afraid—some Back Benchers are afraid—because it looks as though we are yielding something to the French or yielding some international prestige. Labour is, to some degree, afraid, because it looks as though we are going back to the 1980s.

The Secretary of State said something quite prescient in his opening speech—that we must not have a view that is essentially the view of that a generation ago. There are Members on the Government Benches who know much more about this than I do, but that is a classic position on defence policy—that we must not look to the past few campaigns to work out what to do in future. However, that is exactly what we are doing with Trident.

I have with me a whole bunch of cheap quotes—I could not help noticing that the Minister for the Armed Forces glanced up at me then—but I am not going to use them. I just am not cheap enough. I cannot; I am not going to do it. The Minister has advanced many intelligent arguments, but now he is in government he cannot do that, so he must be very frustrated. There was a piece in The Guardian today by Baroness Williams from the other place. I do not know whether the Minister put her up to it, but it was preposterous, saying that we should perhaps reduce from four boats to three. Conservative Members might say, “Hang on—that was kind of hinted at from your perspective six months ago”, but it is ridiculous and absolutely mad. People at the Ministry of Defence probably spent 15, 20 or 25 years thinking what our policy on replacing Polaris should be. They did not just say, “Is it four, or is it three?” Hon. Members can imagine a guy turning up at the MOD with a very large lorry, going upstairs to the fifth or sixth storey and saying to the Secretary of State, “Here are your boats mate; here are your Tridents,” and the Secretary of State saying, “Right, let’s have one up there in Scotland, one doing training or something and one out at sea.” Can hon. Members imagine the chap saying, “Well, you’ve got another one—a fourth one,” and the Secretary of State replying, “There’s a fourth! I didn’t know about that. Can you stick it up in Hertfordshire and cover it with foliage and twigs, and we’ll chat about it in a couple of years’ time”?

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am fascinated by this point about the number of submarines required. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the plan was originally to have five Polaris submarines and that the number was reduced to four by the incoming Labour Government to give them an excuse to say that they were doing something different from the previous Conservative Government? I sometimes get the impression that some of my now allies are trying to make the same sort of suggestion about changing the number from four to three for a similar reason.

[Eric Joyce]

I enjoy giving way to the hon. Gentleman. He made an excellent speech earlier, and I will come to him in a moment; the second part of my speech is on Afghanistan.

Although I may not be qualified to say this, the position of successive Governments on Trident is incoherent militarily; it is political argument. Frankly, the idea that someone can simply pop up in an article in The Guardian or as part of the Government and say, “Let’s knock it from four down to three” is completely mad. Therefore, this turns on a geopolitical argument, which we can discuss, but—guess what?—if it is excluded from a defence review or, indeed, to be fair, a shadow defence review, we cannot discuss it. We simply say, “That’s not going to cut the mustard, so we’ll just leave it out. It’s a bit embarrassing, so just push it out.” That is like suggesting that we should exclude Trident when considering how much we spend on defence each year, or not saying that we spend 2.3% of our gross domestic product on defence, but, for those reasons, we should not do that.

Trident is not really a military question at all; it is a geopolitical question and one for the Prime Minister. I sometimes think that it is rather odd that we even discuss it in defence debates. It is most peculiar that Trident is excluded, and perhaps any defence review with proper integrity would include it. Such a review may conclude that we need Trident or its successor, that we need something different or that we need nothing, but leaving it out is simply an admission that we cannot stack up the argument.

In my last two minutes and four seconds, I shall zoom on to Afghanistan. The same problem exists, because we have an interim situation in the Opposition. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) has ideas that are worth fleshing out. We cannot properly oppose the position at the moment, because politics is as it is. I listened to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and other Members with very great interest. My instinct is that Government Back Benchers have considerable experience, which creates a sense of not disloyalty but ambivalence, with a generation of different ideas that are not classically conservative but are creative and imaginative. That is not to say that one agrees with them, but a lot more of that is going on among Government Members than can happen among Opposition Members. The difficulty is where we are at the moment politically. That will change at the end of the year, but defence debates can be decidedly dull for correspondents in other places, because we tend to agree, which is a bit boring, is it not? However, quite interesting stuff is going on among Government Back Benchers, and Opposition Back Benchers are a little constrained at the moment.

Crucial though issues such as jobs are, I should like to think that future debates in the House would not simply revolve around constituency sectional interests and manufacturing. Our debates need to be about something rather more than that; they need to be much more about the future of foreign and defence policy, what we need to do in this country, whether we pay too much obeisance to the United States and whether we get back in return what we give in geopolitical influence. Those are the key issues that we should be considering, and some of them have been broached tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman does, but I am sure that he will have some tough decisions to make over the next few weeks.

We must also ask whether the size of the Navy is sacrosanct. In the same article in The Sunday Times, the current Secretary of State asked:

“Have we cut the surface fleets too much in order to buy high-end capability?”

That suggests that somehow the size of the Navy is ring-fenced. We are therefore slowly seeing whole chunks of the review being ring-fenced or put off-limits, so I question what type of review it is going to be.

That brings me to the nuclear deterrent, where I must say we have got one whole of a dog’s breakfast. The Minister for the Armed Forces said before the election:

“The Labour and Conservative policy of like-for-like replacement of Trident is absurd”

and that

“Labour wants to press ahead with a £100 billion nuclear weapons system designed for the Cold War and won’t even consider Trident in the upcoming defence review. That makes no sense.”

I understand from the coalition agreement that Trident will be scrutinised to ensure value for money but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) ably pointed out, we are not quite clear what the value-for-money review actually means. Does it mean going back to the proposals of the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife for a cruise-based alternative, or is it just about tinkering with the figures? The new Chief Secretary to the Treasury clearly did not have a clue when he addressed the House last week. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness, he said:

“The hon. Gentleman has no doubt studied carefully the coalition programme…The value-for-money review will do precisely what it says on the tin: we want to get the best value for money from the project and not waste taxpayers’ money unnecessarily on the renewal.”—[Official Report, 17 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 1049.]

Everyone would agree with that, but are we reopening what the Liberal Democrats were putting forward?

[Eric Joyce]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. Does he not think that Labour should conduct its own review in opposition and include Trident in it?

[Mr Jones]

Well, no, I do not, because I have to say that I agree with the Conservative Front-Bench team that we must make sure to replace Trident. I must also say that my hon. Friend threw me a little when he said in his speech that he was now supportive of myself and other former Ministers; I am glad he has turned over a new leaf in opposition.