Iran

Debate between Gordon McKee and Alec Shelbrooke

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

It has been a fascinating debate so far this afternoon. There is no doubt about the effects of a lot of what the hon. Member for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber (Brendan O'Hara) has just said. This debate therefore has to be set into the context of what we are dealing with now. What is going on in Iran is an example of the importance of some of the tough decisions we have to make.

Until November, I am one of the vice-presidents of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Most of my career in this place has been about dealing with soft power, and that is a soft power body. It has become difficult in recent years to maintain the UK’s reputation among allies, because countries, especially the eastern allies of NATO, are accelerating their spending enormously quickly. They are taking that spending up to serious levels, way beyond what would have been suggested, because they recognise the threat.

The hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher), who is not in his place, spoke about how we make people recognise the threat. I do not believe that we always can; indeed, history has shown that we cannot. The hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) and I have often had a discussion over a cup of tea about what happened in the 1930s, and the Cabinet that Ramsay MacDonald had to form as Prime Minister. The difficulty of getting people to recognise the threat is why Winston Churchill went through years of being detested, while he tried to warn of the coming dangers. Neville Chamberlain, often described as an appeaser, recognised that this country was nowhere near ready for war in 1937, and was having to push things back. There is also what is often described as the phoney war from September 1939; people were saying, “Why are we doing this?”, right up until the bombs started to fall.

As I said to the hon. Member for Loughborough, people can see things, but they also cannot see things, so how do we get the message across? We hear people say today, “I am not going to fight for my country. Why should I get involved? Why should I defend the Baltic states?” I remind the House that way back in the 1930s, the Oxford Union had a debate on the motion that

“This House would not in any circumstances fight for King and Country”.

That debate took place—let me get my maths right—some 90-odd years ago. How people regard the defence of their country has never changed, and that is where tough decisions come in. It is the responsibility of Governments to do things that are not popular.

I have debated with the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), many times, and I have a great deal of respect for him. I suspect that tucked away in his notes for his winding-up speech there might be a reference to defence spending in the 14 years of Conservative Government, but I think that line does us a disservice. We have to recognise that from roughly 1989 onwards, defence spending was cut and cut. It hovered between around 2.2% and 2.5% of GDP. The Labour party has said that when it left office, defence spending had risen. In blunt terms, that is true, but Labour MPs do not say just how much was coming out of the reserves to fund the wars. A lot of Labour MPs stare at their feet when that is mentioned now.

Defence was cut further under the coalition Government, when Danny Alexander was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The Liberal Democrats like to speak about what the Conservatives did to defence spending, but they conveniently overlook who the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was who pushed through those defence cuts. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) is, I believe, one of the most experienced men in our party in analysing defence budgets and understanding defence needs. I am sure that when he winds up the debate his words will be worth listening to, as they always are, because he understands, and he understood at the time, that the decisions being made would have a knock-on consequence.

I am trying not to make party political comments today. I am making a speech about the threat that is right in front of our nation’s eyes. It is clear that this general debate on Iran, and the cancellation of all the business previously announced, was arranged not because there is an incoming barrage of missiles and we are going to experience a conflagration, but because the Government did not want to call on the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) to come to the House until six weeks from now. That is obvious, but it does not take away the underlying point that we have to accept in this country.

Let me return to the subject of defence spending. I have been in the Chamber when the procurement Minister, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), and the new Secretary of State for Defence have been at the Dispatch Box to talk about how much funding they are giving to defence. They say that they are spending record amounts on it. Well, I am spending record amounts on diesel for my car, but that does not mean that I am investing more; it means that my revenue costs have gone up—and the former Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), said that the Treasury was not supplying the money, or the Government were not willing to spend it.

The hon. and gallant Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who is no longer in the Chamber, said that there had to be a more hybrid approach to defence, and I think he is right. That does not mean chucking everything else away. I was relieved that the Type 26 and Type 31 programme for the Royal Navy is still in place. However, I am open-minded and, indeed, intrigued: I think there may be a positive outcome to the replacement of the Type 83 with the Type 90s—well, let us just call it a destroyer programme for now, until they have a proper name, but there will be drones attached to them—because we need a flexible workforce.

Wars always accelerate innovation. The speed with which drone technology has developed in the Ukraine war is incredible, but we have seen this before. Look at the speed with which we moved from the V1 to the V2 rocket. Look at the speed of our work to develop atomic weapons over the six years of the second world war; we came very close to developing them then, and indeed ultimately did.

[Gordon McKee]

rose—

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I will give way to my colleague on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

[Gordon McKee]

The right hon. Gentleman is, as always, making a very good speech. I want to make a point that I think is often under-appreciated when we talk about drones and drone warfare. The Ukrainians are, of course, world-leading, but I think that many of us in the west did not realise the extent to which Iran had advanced its drone technology. For instance, Iranian Shahed drones have been used by Russia to harm civilians in Ukraine. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we must watch closely not just what our allies are developing, but what our adversaries are developing?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because that is a point that I was moving towards, given that today’s debate is about Iran, and the consequences of what is happening there for the conflict, for our country and for the defence of Europe. It is now clear that the Russians know how to defeat the weapons that remain in our warehouses, because when we use a weapon, they learn how to defeat it. We therefore have to accelerate our innovation and accelerate how we adapt, and a great deal of that involves drone warfare. Nevertheless, there is always a need for traditional weaponry. I look at the plans for the Royal Navy, and they seem to me to constitute a sensible way forward, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford is in a much stronger position to comment on that.

We have to accept that there are instance when the Ministry of Defence gets it really, really wrong. When, for a short period, I was the procurement Minister, Ajax was landing on my desk every day. My right hon. Friend knows as much about Ajax as most people in this House know about what is in their wardrobe—he knows every nut and bolt—and he is right when he says that we must accept at some point that some projects must be scrapped.