Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill
Greg Knight Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir Gerald Howarth
I thank my hon. Friend from the Army for reminding the House of my interest and experience in aviation.
I am genuinely delighted to open this important debate on defence spending and to introduce my Bill to give legal effect to the Government’s welcome commitment to meet the NATO target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defence. It is an additional pleasure to do so as a former Defence Minister and the Member of Parliament for Aldershot, the home of the British Army, and for Farnborough, the birthplace of British aviation and the home of many of Britain’s finest and world-leading defence companies, whose contribution to our national security is invaluable.
It is also very good to see my hon. Friend the Minister for Defence Procurement, who is responsible for defence equipment and support. He is representing the Government today, but he is a very great friend of mine who is discharging his responsibilities with extraordinary dedication and professionalism.
By the same token, although I have not known the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for as long, I had the pleasure of meeting her earlier this week and I warmly welcome her to her role as shadow Minister. She will find that it is one of the most exciting privileges in this place to have some responsibility for the management of the defence of our country and I wish her well as she seeks to hold the Government to account, as, of course, do we on the Government Benches, fulfilling our constitutional duty.
Before I address the detail of the Bill, I want to set out the context as I see it. I am sure that you will understand, Mr Speaker, but the full force of my argument in support of the Bill cannot be made without reference to the context. Since my right hon. Friends and I produced the strategic defence and security review of 2010 there has been a massive change in the international scene. In a nutshell, we live in an increasingly dangerous world. The turmoil created by the Arab spring, the Syrian uprising, the Libyan campaign, Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimea, which itself followed the illegal annexation of a part of Georgia in 2008, and the rise of ISIL has transformed the international landscape, but that is not the end of it. The jury is out on Iran’s intentions and North Korea remains an utterly irresponsible dictatorship, determined to develop further weapons of mass destruction. The stand-off between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, from time to time threatens to destabilise that important region.
Most importantly, in this, the week of the state visit by the President of the People’s Republic of China, that country is causing concern not just to the Japanese but more widely across the region. As I reminded the House again on Monday, China has recently embarked on a relentless process of colonising uninhabited but disputed atolls in the South China sea, where it is building runways and port facilities. In May, US Defence Secretary Ash Carter prodded China on its continued rapid reclamation efforts, which have resulted in 2,000 acres of land that China claims as sovereign territory but that the United States refuses to recognise. Although China claims this as sovereign territory, many of the islands, including the Spratly islands—that is a wonderful name; I always like putting it on the record—are claimed by other regional powers.
The US Defence Secretary said in some prepared remarks in May that
“China is out of step with both the international rules and norms that underscore the Asia-Pacific’s security architecture, and the regional consensus that favors diplomacy and opposes coercion.”
He reinforced that message more recently when he said that the United States
“will fly, sail, and operate wherever the international law permits… at the times and places of our choosing”.
Last night’s news that TalkTalk had been subjected to a massive cyber-attack serves as a timely reminder of the ever-increasing threat to our security and our intellectual property from such attacks, often committed by criminals, but from time to time committed by nation states, including the People’s Republic of China.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an effective case for adequate and proper defence spending, but as he and I are both against unnecessary red tape I hope that during his remarks he will deal with why he feels we should have the straitjacket of legislation in this area.
Sir Gerald Howarth
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and of course I shall come on to that. As I explained at the outset, in order to explain why I believe this Bill is so important, it is critical to set out the international scene as I see it, for defence can be undertaken only in the context of an analysis of the threats we face. That is why a strategic—I emphasise strategic—defence and security review is under way at present. We could not cover the strategic element in the last SDSR because we had only five months in which to prepare, our having come into government in May 2010. That review was largely Treasury-driven and needed to be Treasury-driven. The present one is different.
BAE Systems
Greg Knight Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Davis
There is another side to the coin, but since my hon. Friend draws me on that point, I am afraid that on one side there is a pound, and on the other there is a ha’penny. I was the Public Accounts Committee Chairman for five years, and I looked at the issue in close detail, and I have to tell him that the Americans are far more aggressive and effective than we are when it comes to protection of their intellectual property.
The proposals have all sorts of strategic implications. One of the things that we looked at 10 years ago—I am probably not breaking too many secrets—was the advanced medium-range air-to-air missile. We were not even allowed technological knowledge of AMRAAM because of the Americans’ defences, and that made it less effective for us. This is quite an area of battle. Indeed, the previous Defence Secretary made quite an issue of this, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) will know, and will understand only too well. We have not fought our corner very well, and I am afraid that BAE Systems is culpable, as part of that. It has been very poor in terms of its strategic decisions on civil and military aviation, and when it comes to protecting our intellectual property.
Mr Knight
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way; he is being very generous. He posed the question of whether what was happening was the result of accident or design. Has he not now answered that question? The answer is design—it is the deliberate decision of the management.
Mr Davis
It is certainly the consequence of deliberate decisions. Whether the management intended this outcome at the beginning, or whether it is sheer crass misjudgment, I will leave the House to judge. What I am trying to do is lay out the facts as starkly as I can, because it was long ago time to open up the process to public scrutiny.
That brings me to the decision today. The company is in the middle of a 90-day consultation period. From the start, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and I, and a number of colleagues—probably every Member of Parliament involved in the process—told the company that we would hold it to its legal responsibilities on a 90-day process. Those legal responsibilities involve being transparent and open, and looking in good faith at all proposals put to it. I repeat that: looking in good faith at all proposals put to it. Unfortunately I have to tell the House that, based on the company’s behaviour to date, it seems to me entirely possible that it has broken its legal responsibilities. It has not looked in good faith at all the options available to it, but I will leave it to my right hon. Friend—I beg his pardon, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle; he is my friend—to say more on that later.
I certainly expect the company to demonstrate why it turned down the options that it was looking at before it made the decision. As far as I can see, it has not even done that. Secondly, I expect it to give proper consideration to the plan drawn up by its management to preserve employment at Brough in my constituency, albeit at lower levels. Again, I think that the right hon. Gentleman will touch on that point.
The work force at Hull are the best, in terms of attitude, productivity and skill, I saw in my 20 years in business before I came to the House, and BAE Systems senior management agree. The work force’s attitude is positive, their productivity is high, and the right hon. Gentleman and I have always been told that they are competitive on cost and quality. They deserve a proper chance.
If the company does a proper, open-minded review, and the figures do not add up—I accept that is possible—its responsibilities do not end there. We have been fortunate: the Civitas think-tank has invested £50,000 in looking at the Brough site to see what it can be used for, how the skills can be deployed, and what we can do without destroying the skills base. For that, I thank it warmly. The chairman of the Government’s skill retention taskforce came to see us yesterday, and it is at work, looking for alternatives. The Government acted within two weeks and put in place two enterprise zones, one on each side of the Pennines, to help us in all this, but if we cannot come up with an alternative, we will again lose a critical mass of skilled workers that will not be replaced once it is dissipated. That is the nub of the matter.
The job losses in Brough and on the other side of the Pennines are, to a large extent, a direct consequence of the company’s strategy over the years. The company’s profits come, to a very large extent, from taxpayer support.