Army Basing Plan

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

It does indeed appear to be a leak in the Dundee Courier; I have its front page here. It is an inaccurate leak: the headline refers to a tank regiment. Of course, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards is not a tank regiment.

I assure my right hon. and learned Friend that there will be no gap in the drawdown between RAF personnel and the build-up of Army personnel at Leuchars. This will take place in stages throughout 2015. By the end of 2015, the Army will be fully in place and the RAF will have vacated it.

My right hon. and learned Friend will also be interested to know that the plan provides for the runway at Leuchars to be maintained as an operational runway with a contingent of about 50 RAF personnel remaining on the base. This will operate as a diversionary runway for the Typhoon squadrons at Lossiemouth. That does mean that the air show will go ahead this year and that the runway will be there in future to make flying from Leuchars possible.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

How many military and civilian personnel will move to York as a result of a welcome decision to move Headquarters 1st Division to York? How many will be lost as a result of the decision to move 15 Brigade to Catterick? Will the Secretary of State clarify whether he means York Outer or York Central? For instance, he says that 2 Signal Regiment is currently based in York Outer; in fact it is based at Imphal barracks in York Central. I would like clarification on those points.

[Mr Hammond]

There are some detailed questions there. I hope that the retention of Imphal barracks in York puts to rest a concern that I know there has been in the city. There will be a marginal increase in the numbers of Army personnel at Imphal as a result of this statement. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will check the figures on the other bases he mentioned in surrounding constituencies and drop him a note later this afternoon.

Deployment to Mali

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The commitment that we have made on the C-17 is for three months and the reason that we have limited it to three months is precisely because we would want at that point to review what impact, if any, any extension beyond that time would have on the air bridge to Afghanistan. Afghanistan remains our principal focus and we will not do anything that will impinge upon success there.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Nobody welcomes the deployment of British troops abroad, but the UK is right to provide support to France and to the Anglophone west African countries, which, in long run, ought to be giving the security guarantees that are needed in Mali. Will the Secretary of State explain why this is an EU security lead rather than a NATO security lead, what liaison there is between the EU and NATO, and what both bodies are doing to assess where the rebels and their armaments will go next so that we can have a regional response to the crisis?

[Mr Hammond]

My view is that this type of operation, where there is a military component and a much wider dimension within the country—a need to establish the rule of law and proper civil governance, and an ongoing need for economic development assistance—is ideally suited to EU involvement. At the moment, the French operation is a national operation, but the fact that the EU has been prepared to propose a training mission is welcome. There is, as yet, no NATO activity around this operation. It is a French operation first, then an EU and an AFISMA operation.

I should correct something that I said earlier. I said that the majority of Malians were Christians, but in fact the majority of Malians are Muslims. The ethnic split, not the religious split, puts the majority in the south.

Afghanistan

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I think that the answer to that must be yes, that has had an impact on Pakistani public opinion. There is also evidence that the Taliban is moderating some of its more extreme views because it recognises that they are costing it popularity with the population.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I was in Afghanistan three weeks ago as president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I concur that the Afghan national army is capable, well led and well equipped. It is essential that it remains under political control, however, and as President Karzai will step down early in 2014 and a new president will be elected, will the Secretary of State reassure me that our Government and those of our ISAF allies will give as much attention to the political transition as to the security transition?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Clearly, maintaining political control of the Afghan national army is crucial. I see little sign that it is becoming politicised and it operates effectively as a military force, but the Afghan Ministry of Defence is a weak institution. One area that we are considering for UK engagement beyond 2014 is the provision of support at senior level to the Afghan Ministry of Defence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

We do not discuss in this Chamber matters relating to intelligence. I can tell my hon. Friend that there is a need for effective action in the Pakistani tribal areas and that there is a need for that action to be owned by the Pakistanis. The United States operates in Afghanistan under a different basis of law from the one under which we operate. I can assure my hon. Friend and the House that everything we do complies with the law under which we operate.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

One of my constituents served on the Arctic convoys during the second world war. Like many others, he has been advised not to accept a medal offered by the Russian Government. I was heartened by the Minister saying that this matter would be reconsidered and a decision taken by the end of the year. May I ask him to reflect on the fact that other British Commonwealth countries—Australia, New Zealand, Canada—have advised that this medal can be accepted and that it is hardly surprising the offer was not made earlier when there was a communist Government in Russia?

[Dr Murrison]

Sir John Holmes, in his excellent review published in July this year, accepted all the principal parts of the rules that go behind or underpin medalling in this country. We have to accept that the integrity of our medalling system is peerless. Nevertheless, Sir John will report further towards the end of the year on the rules that apply to medalling and will deal specifically with the Arctic convoy and various other circumstances.

Army 2020

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I think I mentioned that one of the units being withdrawn will become a TA unit. Of course, people leaving the regular forces are always most welcome to join the reserves. My hon. Friend’s point about timing is important, and the process of building up the reserves has already begun. A recruiting campaign was launched over the Christmas-new year period, and further campaigns are in hand. We expect there to be a steady build-up in the reserves between now and 2018.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I am still unclear. The Secretary of State said, “I can confirm that no current regimental names or cap badges will be lost”. Will he state clearly for the House that neither the names nor the badges of the Duke of Wellington’s or the Green Howards will be lost? Will he tell us the current strength of a Yorkshire regiment, both in reservists and regulars, and what it will be after the 2nd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment has been disbanded?

[Mr Hammond]

The reference to current regiments is to the current regiments of the British Army. There will be no loss of regimental names or cap badges. We have assured that by removing battalions only from multi-battalion regiments. He is referring not to a current regimental name but to an antecedent regimental name attached to a battalion. What happens to that name and how the battalions within the regiment rename and reorder themselves after the structural change is a matter for the regimental family. It is for them to decide. If they wish to retain the antecedent names appended to the battalions, they will be entitled to do so.

Defence Reform

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

With all the pressure on defence spending in this country and abroad, it is hardly surprising that at the NATO summit in Chicago, smart defence was one of the key items of discussion and NATO pledged to do more with less. I believe that NATO, like the Defence Ministries in its member states, will deliver greater value for money if its expenditure is transparent, subject to independent audit and scrutinised by Parliaments in member states.

NATO’s external audit function is overseen by the International Board of Auditors for NATO, which consists of six board members who are nominated by the national delegations. The members rotate between the NATO member states, so there is no continuity of oversight. The IBAN board is accountable not to Parliaments, as is the National Audit Office in relation to UK defence expenditure, but to the North Atlantic Council, the executive branch of NATO. The audits are carried out by 22 able members of staff, who are not independent, but are employed by NATO.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

As an ex-NATO officer, may I point out that the North Atlantic Council can sit in Prime Minister or President form, Foreign Minister form, Defence Minister form or permanent representative form? Governments are therefore represented on the North Atlantic Council, to which IBAN reports.

[Hugh Bayley]

Governments are represented, but Parliaments are not. The principle in the UK is that the National Audit Office belongs and reports to Parliament. It has reported to Parliament for 150 years on UK defence expenditure, while obviously keeping secret things that must necessarily be kept secret, so there is no reason why we cannot have public reporting of defence expenditure.

NATO’s international board of auditors audited 49 separate sets of NATO accounts last year. I recently met Tim Banfield, a director of the NAO who is responsible for UK defence audits. He told me that NATO’s financial statements are frequently audited late, sometimes by as much as three years, which is not compliant with decent accounting standards—auditors who are trying to track expenditure cannot find the answers to the questions they need to ask three years after an operation has closed down. I asked a Foreign Office Minister how good the audits are, because they are not published. He told me that of the 49 sets of accounts last year, 14 were qualified by the auditors because of irregularities.

In addition to the financial audits, five performance audits—value-for-money audits—were carried out last year, but there is little evidence that NATO changes how it works to improve value for money in response to their conclusions. Only one of those 49 sets of accounts has been put into the public domain, according to NATO’s website.

The failure to publish accounts reduces the pressure on NATO managers to respond to deficiencies when they are revealed by audits, and to improve their performance. I raise this matter with the Minister now because I believe there is a narrow window of opportunity to change things, because the NATO Secretary-General has commissioned the new deputy Secretary-General to review the audit function. I shall share with the House a brief extract from a document provided by the Secretary-General to national delegations, including the UK ambassador to NATO. The Secretary-General said:

“We must adopt best practices employed by other international organisations. NATO is very unusual in having its own auditing service…Organisations that employ external public-service auditors include UNESCO, WTO, OSCE and the OECD.

To bring us into line with best practice, I propose the adoption of the same approach, phased in to ensure continuity of work.”

He goes on to make the point that the only other body that does not have an independent external audit function is the EU, from which some hon. Members would not like to take lessons in that respect.

The NATO Secretary-General clearly wants change, but the decision will not be made by him; it will be made by the North Atlantic Council. Will the UK representative at the North Atlantic Council, whether our ambassador, one of our Ministers or the Prime Minister, support the change agenda? Will the deputy Secretary-General’s report be shown to the NAO and the supreme audit institutions of other member states, such as the US Government Accountability Office, for comment before it is shown to the North Atlantic Council? Will our ambassador lobby representatives of other member states to build a coalition to change the audit function within NATO and to bring the information, apart from that which necessarily must be kept secret for security reasons, into the public domain?

That information will drive improved value for money within NATO. NATO can hardly urge its member states to deliver more value for money if it does not take a lead by doing so itself.

Defence Budget and Transformation

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As has been said from the Dispatch Box before, maritime surveillance from conventional aircraft is not currently funded in the programme. That is one of the capability gaps that my predecessor chose to accept, and a risk that we have chosen to manage. A number of different technologies will be available to deal with it as we approach the end of the decade. That is one of the decisions that the armed forces committee will have to make when it considers the prioritisation for the head room in the planned equipment budget.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State assure the House that the budget that he has announced today will still meet the NATO requirement for us to spend 2% of our gross domestic product on defence? Given that operations abroad will almost certainly involve allies from other NATO countries, can he tell me whether he has made any progress in persuading countries that spend less than 2% of their GDP on defence to increase their defence spending, to which he has referred in the House previously, and if so, which countries are involved?

[Mr Hammond]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that our defence budget in the spending review period exceeds the 2% of GDP NATO guideline. What I said on the previous occasion, and have said publicly on a number of occasions, is that while in the medium term our NATO partners must increase their contribution to collective defence, in the short term, at a time when there is extreme fiscal pressure on nearly all the European NATO countries, it is not realistic to go around wagging the finger at them about the amount that they spend. I have chosen to focus my pitch to them on the need to render the budgets that they do have more effective by making their forces more deployable and more available to the alliance. That is the thrust of the message that I was trying to deliver in Germany the week before last.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. As he will know, I was with the Prime Minister in Paris last Friday, when we confirmed that we will take forward the assessment phase of the medium altitude long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle with the French. Clearly, we can co-operate on many areas with France, a country with a broadly similar industrial base and defence budget to our own. Such co-operation will be to the benefit of both countries, and I intend to explore all those opportunities.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

The military action over Libya showed that among the European members of NATO there was a shortage of precision guided missiles, of air-to-air refuelling capacity and of airborne drones to identify targets. Clearly we need to acquire more capacity in those fields, so how sure is the Secretary of State that his budget will enable the UK to play its part in building a stronger European capacity?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman correctly identifies one of the lessons from the Libya campaign. Much of what came out of that campaign was positive, but clearly some shortfalls were identified. I must say that the finger must point primarily at those European members of NATO that fail to spend the target 2% of their GDP on defence. We will be looking to them to contribute the additional resources required to make good the shortfalls.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Part of the answer to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) is collaboration with NATO allies. They can share assets that they have and that we do not have, and we can reinforce their capabilities in other areas. The smart defence agenda is an important one—it involves collaboration among NATO allies in procurement to ensure that we get the best defence effect we can get with the limited budgets available.

As I have said, defence must make its contribution to delivering sound public finances, so even if the defence programme that we inherited had been in good shape, the spending review and the SDSR would have had to find savings to contribute to overall deficit reduction. However, the defence programme that the Government inherited was very far from being in good shape. At its heart, it had a £38 billion black hole filled with procurement projects that were at best hopelessly over budget and out of control, and at worst pure fantasy. They were projects announced by politicians—actually, mainly one politician—without any budget cover or prospect of ever being delivered, in a programme that had no proper contingency, no effective recognition of risk, and no provision for the “conspiracy of optimism” that was evident in MOD equipment cost estimates. The support programme systematically underprovided for the proper maintenance and sustainment of the equipment that was already in service. In short, Mr Deputy Speaker, it was a shambles.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Hammond]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who will perhaps explain his way out of that.

[Hugh Bayley]

Were the capital programmes that the right hon. Gentleman’s Government inherited supported or opposed by the chiefs of staff at the time?

[Mr Hammond]

I am obviously not privy to the advice given to Ministers in the previous Government by their defence advisers, nor should I be, but if the previous Government were succumbing to recommendations from the defence chiefs, they were doing them no favours by pretending that they could deliver equipment programmes for which there were no funding lines or budget cover, and when there was no prospect of their materialising.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Defence debates in this House are best when Members stick to national security, rather than party political knockabout. I respect the Secretary of State, who I think is a very capable Minister, and wish him well in his new post—but, like my right hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy), I regret the party political tone of some of his remarks, and feel that I should briefly respond.

I have been a Member for almost 20 years, and during that time, under Conservative Governments the defence budget has been cut as a proportion of national income, and under Labour Governments it has increased. Under the Major Government, between 1991-92—when I entered the House—and 1997-98, the share of national income, or GDP, spent on defence fell from 4% to 2.5%; under the Blair-Brown Government it rose from 2.5% to 2.7%. In a parliamentary question to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury last week, following the second tranche of redundancies, I asked what proportion of national income is spent on defence, and was told that it is still 2.7%. But the Chief Secretary continued:

“It is impossible to state exactly what percentage of GDP or gross national income will be spent in future years…However, I expect the percentage to remain above the 2% NATO target.”—[Official Report, 25 January 2012; Vol. 539, c. 240W.]

In other words, it will fall, and fall quite significantly.

[Dan Byles]

On those figures, does the hon. Gentleman not accept, however, that the international situation was changeable? We had the end of the cold war and the widespread demand for a peace dividend during the period that he referred to under the Major Government. We then had 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan during the period that he referred to as the “Blair-Brown” years, whereas we are now out of Iraq and will shortly pull out of Afghanistan. He cannot look at the issue in isolation.

[Hugh Bayley]

The hon. Gentleman makes some fair comments, but the Government have not established that the level of risk facing the country is declining, so they have not made the case in defence and security terms for the reduction in expenditure that they are making.

The United States, the UK, France, Greece and Albania are the only NATO members that spend at or above 2% of their GDP on defence; the other 23 of the 28 NATO allies spend less. The Libya campaign showed that current European spending on defence is not sufficient to conduct an effective military operation against a poorly armed regime distracted by a civilian uprising in a sparsely populated country with only 6 million inhabitants. Within weeks of the start of military operations, European countries were running out of precision-guided missiles and needed to turn to the United States to provide them. We also needed to turn to the United States to provide surveillance aircraft to identify targets and to provide air-to-air refuelling.

All 28 NATO member states voted for the Libya campaign, but less than half participated in it and fewer than one third contributed to strike operations. In June 2011, in a speech in Brussels, the outgoing United States Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, said that

“many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they cannot. The military capabilities simply aren't there.”

That led Mr Gates, just before he left office, to question the future of NATO, and in the same speech he said:

“If current trends in the decline of European defence capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US political leaders…may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”

Robert Gates is not a maverick. He served as Defence Secretary under the Bush presidency and under Obama, and in that speech he articulated views that are frequently expressed by members of the United States Congress and other US speakers at meetings of the NATO Parliament Assembly, which I attend along with the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), who leads our delegation. Indeed, a report adopted by the economics and security committee at our most recent meeting in October 2011 stated:

“If anything, Secretary Gates was being diplomatic. Europe’s defence posture has grown woefully weak…It is time for Europe to get serious about this issue.”

In November, in a speech to the Australian Parliament, President Obama declared that the United States was a Pacific power, and said that maintaining a military presence in the Asia-Pacific region was a top priority and would not be affected by United States defence cuts—a point that he re-emphasised earlier this month in a speech at the Pentagon about the US comprehensive defence review.

Those statements from our American allies make it clear to me that we in Europe need to do more than we are currently doing. Although we stay above the NATO target of 2% of GDP spending on defence, our defence cuts in the UK make it harder for us to persuade our European allies of the need for them to do their bit and get their spending up to that target.

In President Obama’s speech at the Pentagon he said:

“the size and the structure of our military and defense budgets have to be driven by a strategy, not the other way around.”

The UK Government need to operate on the same basis. I therefore believe that the defence cuts that the Government have announced should be contingent on the successful implementation, on a Europe-wide basis, of a strategy to increase defence expenditure and make better use of the resources that we already have by eliminating waste and duplication.

The UK-France defence and security co-operation treaty is a step in the right direction. It will allow the shared deployment of aircraft and aircraft carriers and air-to-air refuelling capabilities, and I am sure that as a result capabilities will be provided more cost-effectively than if we did such things alone. The nascent Nordic defence co-operation is another example. But we clearly need more shared assets in Europe. Why are we not buying strategic airlift on a joint basis with allies, as NATO did with the airborne warning and control system, or AWACS—although the UK, of course, did not join that initiative? Why do we not do the same with air-to-air refuelling?

Most of all, we need better co-operation in our defence industries. The armed forces in Europe have more service personnel than the United States, but we are way behind in terms of defence budgets, investment and capabilities.

[Mrs Moon]

One way to resolve the problem of sharing capacity would be to have an agreement with Luxembourg, a land-locked country that has no coastline but two maritime patrol aircraft. Perhaps we could agree to share its maritime patrol capability, as we have none.

[Hugh Bayley]

My hon. Friend has made her point well. I would like us not only to make bilateral agreements with other countries but, far more, to look strategically across Europe at how we should restructure our defence industries to eliminate duplication and produce what we need—common equipment on a common basis. We should acquire major capital items of equipment that will be shared in NATO operations on a common basis.

In the few seconds that I have left, I would like to say a word or two about the local implications of the defence cuts for my constituency and the rest of Yorkshire. The latest figure that I have for the number of regular military personnel based in Yorkshire and the Humber is 14,730; for North Yorkshire the figure is 13,310, and in my constituency of York it is 880. The figures date from 2009, before the general election. If between now and 2015 those figures reduced in proportion with the overall reduction in the numbers of our armed forces—that is, by 8.5% or 9%—one might expect force reductions of about 1,300 across our region, of whom 1,200 would be in North Yorkshire and 70, perhaps, in York itself.

On the day last week when the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), made his written ministerial statement about the second tranche of redundancies, I tabled a number of parliamentary questions asking for these regional numbers at the time of the general election, in December 2011, and in 2015. At business questions last week I asked whether the Leader of the House could make sure that I got answers before this debate. I received a letter from the Minister with responsibility for defence personnel, but it did not contain the figures. I hope that those figures will be provided to me as soon as possible.

Defence Transformation

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I have set out that funding today— £400 million in this Parliament and £1.5 billion by 2020. One of the ways in which we can do it is to challenge the Opposition to say whether they would match that funding in the unfortunate event for the country that they ever came back to power.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Will the headquarters of the Yorkshire-based brigade remain in York? What implication will today’s announcement have for the number of regular soldiers in the Yorkshire Regiment, and what is the future of RAF Linton-on-Ouse?

[Dr Fox]

I am pleased, and no doubt the hon. Gentleman will be pleased, at the decision that 15 (North East) Brigade will remain in York. That is a decision that we have taken.