Foreign Affairs and Defence

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone)—although I must say that I have never confused him with Jeremy Thorpe—and to see you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I respond to the Gracious Speech debate.

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have made speeches today, but I pay particular tribute to all those who made maiden speeches. The time limit means that I cannot go through those contributions in as much detail as I would like, but I will briefly congratulate all those hon. Members. The hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) spoke passionately about diversity, and adds to it with her strong Irish heritage. The hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) is surely the first ever MP to have worked as a sewer baiter. My twins had their 10th birthday during the election campaign, so I know how the hon. Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) feels. It is painful, but it gets better—don’t worry. I wish him and his family well.

The hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) made a point of order earlier about energy infrastructure. Pylons have also been proposed in Suffolk, and I agree with her that there are other options; we are saying to the Government that we want to see them. I am grateful for her very passionate maiden speech. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) will, I am sure it is fair to say, be a doughty champion for his constituents.

It is brilliant to have, in the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas), a former member of the Royal Air Force in Parliament, especially in the current context. I was passionate about the global combat air programme when I was Minister for Defence Procurement—it shows the importance of our maintaining combat air competitiveness. I hope that he will contribute to the debate next Wednesday.

I was grateful to hear the cut and thrust of Scottish colleagues, including the hon. Members for Midlothian (Kirsty McNeill) and for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey), and, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper), who certainly punched above his weight in his maiden speech.

Arguably, we did not hear enough about rural matters in the King’s Speech, but the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) certainly made up for that. She will clearly be a passionate advocate for farming and the environment in her constituency. I am grateful for all those maiden speeches, and I hope that we will hear much more from those colleagues in future.

Turning to defence matters, may I welcome the new foreign affairs and defence ministerial teams to their positions? As the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), said, we will work with them where it is in the national interest—especially on supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes—as they did when they were in opposition. We welcome the cross-party spirit in which the Secretary of State for Defence set out his plans for a strategic defence review. We look forward to working with Lord Robertson, for whom I have the greatest respect, in a constructive and collaborative manner.

May I thank the Secretary of State for paying tribute to the two previous Secretaries of State, Ben Wallace and Grant Shapps, both of whom I had the privilege to work with as Minister for Defence Procurement? They can both be rightly proud of the enormous contribution that they made in supporting Ukraine, but they had something else in common: they were not afraid to make the unambiguous case for higher defence spending, and most importantly, they were successful. It helped that they had a Prime Minister who, as Chancellor, oversaw the largest spending review increase for defence since the cold war, and ensured that we went into the general election with a credible and fully funded plan to increase our defence budget to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.

Although I welcome the fact that the Labour Government have said that they are committed to 2.5%, we have nothing but uncertainty over their timetable. Indeed, this morning I was interviewed by Kay Burley of Sky News. She put it to me that the Government’s timetable is to reach 2.5% by the end of the Parliament—so 2028 or 2029. I said that that was not what I understood the public position to be, but she told me that she had been informed privately by the Government that that was the timetable, so I would be grateful if they confirmed now, in Parliament, what exactly the position is on this matter of great sensitivity.

Let me explain why the timetable for 2.5% really matters. When the previous Prime Minister announced that we would commit to 2.5%, he stated that his top priority was to replenish our munitions. That 2.5% figure enabled us to commit £10 billion of extra funding over 10 years to fund munitions, and it is a fact—I know this—that without a clear pathway to 2.5%, the Ministry of Defence would have had to make substantial cuts or deferments to programmes in order to afford that necessary replenishment of our munitions. That is why it is so significant, and why we need to know exactly what the position is. Is Kay Burley correct that the Government have told Sky News that they have a timetable for reaching 2.5% by 2028 or 2029? If not—if there is no timetable for 2.5%—how is the MOD going to fund its munitions strategy? Will those orders for shells and missiles for the Army, Navy and Air Force actually be placed this year? If not, what will be the impact on our world-leading defence sector, and above all, what will be the impact on our warfighting capability as a nation?

Without a clear pathway to 2.5%, what will be the immediate impact on the Department’s finances? Will the MOD continue to invest in cutting-edge capability such as directed energy weapons and hypersonics? That 2.5% would also have stabilised our two biggest defence programmes in light of the inflationary funding pressures that followed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. This is all open and in the public domain—the Public Accounts Committee was talking about it in the lead-up to the general election. I am talking about the nuclear deterrent and the global combat air programme, our absolutely essential sixth-generation fighter programme. I am delighted that we now have consensus between the Government and ourselves on both the nuclear deterrent and GCAP, but can the Government confirm that delaying 2.5% will have no impact on the funding elements of either of those two major programmes? Can the Secretary of State or the Minister responding also confirm that the Secretary of State’s strategic defence review will conclude entirely before the next spending review commences, so that that review is threat-based, rather than forced on to the financial back foot by Treasury considerations?

Of course, if the Government’s public position is that there is no timetable to 2.5%, they will inevitably point to the old chestnut of the public finances being worse than feared, justifying the inevitable cuts or deferments of programmes that follow. I have the greatest respect for the Secretary of State, but we did hear some of that in his opening remarks. I am afraid that that excuse will not wash, though. Inflation is at 2% and on target; the economy is growing at a healthy rate and ahead of our competitors; wages are rising; unemployment is almost half what it was in 2010, when we took power; and the deficit is forecast to fall to just over 1% of GDP by the end of the current forecast period. [Interruption.] Labour Members chunter. They talk about missions; when we came to power, our mission was to save this country from bankruptcy, because once again, the socialists had run out of other people’s money.

The forecast deficit in 2010 was heading well north of 10%, so we did the right thing: we had to take difficult decisions, and we restored our public finances. Because of that, when the pandemic struck and the energy support had to be put in place, we could afford that enormous support. We are proud of that—proud of furlough, of saving those jobs and those businesses in every constituency. We did it because of those difficult decisions after the mess Labour left us in 2010. [Interruption.] Labour Members talk about the previous Prime Minister but one, but our strong economic legacy cannot be used to pray in aid a cover for cuts and deferments. [Interruption.] They quibble when we talk about a strong economic legacy. How else can we describe low unemployment, inflation at 2%, a low and falling deficit—half what it was when we took over from them—or the highest growth in the G7? That is a fantastic inheritance. Far from being an excuse for the cuts that the Government will have to come to, those are the features of the very improvement in economic conditions that made our pre-election commitment to 2.5% financially credible and deliverable.

We strongly welcome the Prime Minister’s staunch support for NATO, as evidenced in Washington, and we want him to succeed on his pledges to strengthen Britain’s defence. That is in our national interest, but it is actions that matter and by which the Government will be judged, and deferring and delaying 2.5% offers nothing but uncertainty to our armed forces at the worst possible time. If the Government have a private timetable to reach 2.5%, they need to share it; if there is not one, I urge the Secretary of State to persuade the Prime Minister and his Treasury colleagues to think again, because in this more dangerous world, higher defence spending is a matter of the utmost urgency for Britain.