Strategic Defence and Security Review

James Gray Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of progress on defence reform and the Strategic Defence and Security Review.

I begin by welcoming the Secretary of State to the first full debate on defence in which he has taken part as Secretary of State. In the short couple of months in which he has been in post, he has really impressed the Defence Committee, and me. I have formed an extremely high opinion of him as Secretary of State. I am perfectly well aware that he will be thinking at the moment, “If only I could say the same of him,” but I hope that during the course of the debate we will get to the bottom of some of the issues we face. I also welcome the very fact that we are having the debate, and thank the Backbench Business Committee for at last finding a day on which we can discuss one of the most important issues in the world, and the most important issue of government.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I, too, welcome the fact that the Backbench Business Committee has found time for this debate, but does my right hon. Friend not agree that defence should be a matter not for that Committee but for Her Majesty’s Government? This issue should be debated in Government time, not in Backbench Business Committee time.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I would hope that this issue could be debated both in Back-Bench time and in Government time, because of its central importance, but as the Committee will see, the pressure on speaking opportunities this afternoon is heavy, so there is a time limit even though there will not be a vote at the end. I hope that that means that we will have further such debates.

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[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

Let me begin by paying tribute to Signaller Ian Sartorius-Jones of 20th Armoured Brigade Headquarters and Signal Squadron, who died on operations in Afghanistan on 24 January. Our thoughts at this difficult time are with his family and friends. All of us in this House are acutely conscious of the sacrifices being made in Afghanistan on a daily basis by the men and women of our armed forces. The experience of my first 100 days as Secretary of State for Defence has only reinforced my admiration for their selflessness, dedication and bravery, as well as for the commitment and professionalism of the civilians who support them. They are rightly a source of great pride to the nation.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) on securing this debate on behalf of the Select Committee on Defence, and on his speech, most of which I wholeheartedly agreed with. I am delighted to have the opportunity to address the House on the defence reform programme that I have inherited, on my approach to it, and on how I will take forward the delivery of the defence outputs required under the strategic defence and security review.

[Mr Gray]

Does my right hon. Friend remember—perhaps he would do so nostalgically—the days when we had at least three debates annually on defence on a Government motion in Government time? Does he agree that this should be a Government debate rather than a Back-Bench one?

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[Mr Gray]

Will my right hon. Friend give way before he moves on?

[Mr Hammond]

I will not give way to my hon. Friend a second time, as I am conscious that a large number people wish to participate in the debate.

People remain the greatest asset of defence and, despite the tough decisions that must be taken, we will do all we can to protect them. This Government understand our duty to the country and to our armed forces. We have made the tough choices necessary to put them on a sustainable footing for the defence of national security and of the United Kingdom’s interests around the world. We know that making those changes will not to be easy, but I have no doubt that the British armed forces that will emerge will be formidable, flexible and adaptable, supported by the fourth largest defence budget in the world, meeting our NATO responsibilities and equipped with some of the best and most advanced technology on earth.

To get there, we need not just the series of structural and organisational changes I have set out, but a cultural shift in the way the organisation thinks and works. We need a shift in military doctrine to deliver the defence effect we will need, using the capabilities we will have; a shift in civilian culture to one of discipline, individual accountability and delegated decision making; and a shift to a leaner, fitter, more empowered and more empowering organisation. This is a programme of renewal and change of a scope and on a scale greater than anything else being delivered across the public sector. It is a blueprint for a sustainable future for the UK’s armed forces as one of the world’s most capable fighting machines. That is what Britain needs and what our armed forces deserve, and as we move forward to deliver it we will never forget that at the heart of this organisation are the servicemen and women who are prepared to put their lives on the line for us day in, day out. We owe it to them to make sure that the transformation we have embarked upon delivers its full promise.

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[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

If I may be forgiven, I shall not dwell on the welcome recommitment made by the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) to the independent nuclear deterrent, which my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) will have very much welcomed, if not the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown)—who, I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear, none the less looked perfectly benign during his speech. Rather, I would like to focus on more general topics.

I was very struck, and impressed, by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. He has been dealt an extraordinarily difficult hand, in the sense that he came into government, discovered a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget and was then required by our right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make defence’s contribution towards balancing the books. However, the purpose of today’s debate is not to consider the great national issues of balancing the books and dealing with the deficit left to us by the previous Government. That is a matter for other times and other people, in a higher position than mine. Rather, our position in this debate ought to be that which was exemplified by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh): to consider whether what we are currently doing is the right thing for the defence of the realm. If it is not, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Prime Minister and others at a higher pay grade than me will have to explain why they are doing the wrong thing for the defence of the realm. However, we in this debate should cast to one side economic constraints—I hope that I am not being naive or difficult in doing that—and instead focus on what we should be doing for the defence of the realm.

I had the good fortune of being asked to serve on our policy review group before the last election. I was the MP on the group, which was chaired by the noble Baroness Neville-Jones and produced this weighty document, “An Unquiet World: Submission to the Shadow Cabinet”, on which our manifesto was subsequently based. She says on page 8:

“Capability…needs to be reassessed. An incoming Conservative government should conduct a Defence Review not with the aim of inflicting further cuts, but of ensuring that our armed forces have been asked to do the right job, are properly equipped and trained and are employed on the right terms and conditions.”

Elsewhere in the report she says:

“Defence Reviews tend to strike dread into the hearts of those involved or affected,”

because of the likelihood of cuts, although this is

“not a necessary outcome and not one this Policy Group would wish to see.”

In other words, the policy group on which I served, and which informed the manifesto of my party, took the view that there should be a defence review, but that it should not necessarily involve defence cuts.

The reality, of course, is what we have seen since, which the Secretary of State laid out plainly in his speech. Indeed, it rather reminded me of a speech by a chairman of a multinational company explaining to shareholders that things were not all that great and that he would have to make some cuts to the company, but that he very much hoped that dividends would once again start to be paid in the years to come. It was an accountant’s speech, rather than a defence speech. I do not blame him for that: that is his job. None the less, I have the great luxury of being a Back Bencher and being the chairman of the all-party group on the armed forces. I therefore feel it right to speak up for the armed forces, even if that were to upset those on my own Front Bench, which is not something that I would ever seek to do, as I know my hon. Friend the Minister would agree.

The first thing to say is that the only certainty in the defence world is uncertainty. We never know what is going to happen next. Who would have predicted the Falklands? Who would have predicted Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait? Who would have predicted 9/11 or 7/7? Who would have thought that we would simultaneously be fighting two wars, as we were recently in Afghanistan and Iraq? Who would have predicted Libya, Kosovo, the Balkans or Sierra Leone? None of them was even remotely predictable—nor, of course, was the second world war or the first world war, which was sparked off by the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Unpredictability is the absolutely highest certainty in defence.

Against that background of uncertainty, let us think about what we are facing today. Who knows what Iran will do? We could see further activity from the Iranians within weeks—there is a threat to block the straits of Hormuz. Israel is threatening pre-emptive—nuclear, potentially—action against them. The whole Palestinian question remains unanswered, and Syria is in turmoil. We have no idea what is going to happen in Egypt, despite the lifting of the state of emergency, and Pakistan is on the brink of collapse. We do not really know what is going on in Libya; there is certainly a bit of a vacuum there. The situation in Afghanistan is uncertain, and Iraq is close to meltdown. We are living in an incredibly dangerous and uncertain world, and we should be preparing our defences for that uncertainty.

So what are we actually doing? The hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) was right to say that Labour Governments tend to spend more on defence than Conservative ones; that is historically accurate. I very much regret to say that my great party is announcing an Army that will be the smallest since the Crimean war. Some define an army as a body of 100,000 soldiers. It is therefore arguable, depending on how one uses the word, that in the near future, Great Britain will no longer have an army; it will have only a defence force. As a Back Bencher who does not labour under the great considerations of state, I am able to say to the House that that would be a disgraceful situation, given the uncertainty that we are facing. The Royal Air Force is being cut in half; the Navy is being emasculated. It is my view that this country no longer has the capability to do the things that we have always done.

Why should that be the case? I want to quote a previous Prime Minister, who shall remain nameless. He said to me, “I went to see the teachers, and they told me to get lost. I went to see the doctors and nurses, and they told me to get lost. Then I went to see the generals. They saluted, turned to the right and marched off, saying, ‘Whatever you say, Prime Minister. I will happily carry that out.’” That is precisely what is happening now. Whatever task is put before our armed forces, they will find a way to do it—they are a can-do organisation—but should we be asking them to do it?

In the 15 years that I have been in this place, we have talked, in these dusty Thursday afternoon debates, about overstretch and about the fact that the armed forces were unable to carry out their duties. We blamed the Labour Government for all that, but I now find myself speaking from the Government Back Benches and making precisely the same arguments as those I have made over the past 15 years. I do not believe, given the cuts that we are now facing, that we will be able to carry out our moral duty to lead the world and to intervene for good around the world. We are hampering ourselves in that regard.

For that reason, I believe that defence spending and budgets should be separate from those of schools and hospitals and from other parts of the national budget. We have a moral duty to do certain things in the world, and we should not allow our economic situation to prevent us from doing them. I regret to have to say that I am at odds with my own party on this great subject. We should find a way to maintain our defence spending at a level at which we, as a nation, can punch above our weight.

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[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

As a member of the Defence Committee, I welcome this opportunity to contribute to the debate. Defence reform is a complex matter and it is not easy, in a few minutes, to encapsulate coherently and completely in an incisive contribution how one would move things forward. I say that to mitigate the disappointment when I sit down and to reflect how difficult it is to reform a Department that has so much complexity hard-wired into its fabric. Much analysis and many reports on this issue have been undertaken over the years and I do not want to use my time now to revisit controversial decisions on whether, if or when we will have an aircraft carrier or aircraft carriers, or on the number of senior posts that will be rationalised, or on how those decisions were taken. Neither do I want to examine the different reasons armed forces personnel face a greater likelihood of compulsory redundancy than their civil service counterparts.

The three points I wish to raise today concern culture, accountability and the measurement of outcomes. Regardless of what decisions are made about programmes and the size and shape of the three services, it is in those three areas that lasting, effective and meaningful reform will be achieved. Many people will probably raise their eyebrows at the mention of culture and think it is a soft and peripheral concern. They might think that the culture of the armed forces is well defined and focused, so let me explain what I mean.

I have no doubt whatever that the sense of discipline, service and mutual dependency is fully developed within the culture of the armed services, as is that brave willingness to risk life and limb for country. However, I am increasingly of the view, through all my different interactions with the armed services in the two years I have been in the House, that although in operational terms there is no doubt about how well the different services work together, when it comes to taking decisions in the interests of UK defence at the strategic and policy level, individuals display an undue dependency on their own service, department or section and the affinities that go with them. Often, I feel that decisions on fundamental matters of reform are made on the basis of the relative political skills of the senior individuals involved. Until a culture exists that rewards and prizes fully at all levels the good of UK defence above other ingrained imperatives, lasting and successful reform will not happen. We cannot continue to pay lip service to jointery from a structural and organisational chart perspective but make no real investment in the mechanics of decision making within the MOD.

The second issue I want to address is accountability. The Defence Committee’s report of just this week says that

“the MoD could not provide adequate audit evidence for over £5.2 billion worth of certain inventory and capital spares.”

My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) referred to the Secretary of State appearing like the chairman of an international company.

[Mr Gray]

A very good one.

[John Glen]

Indeed, but what would happen in a business if such inventory could not be accounted for so that for the fifth year the financial director had to qualify the accounts? My gallant Defence Committee colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), recently told me he had once been severely reprimanded for an unaccounted rifle. That was only a generation ago, yet today £125 million-worth of Bowman radios are still unaccounted for.

Many Members will raise their eyebrows, because the issue has been highlighted so many times in different reports, but poor accountability for decisions and outcomes and for the use of public money needs to be addressed. Accountability needs to be hard-wired in the MOD, not just at the highest level but at every level, otherwise reform will not be successful.

The final issue I want to examine is measuring outcomes. As a member of the Select Committee, I draw attention to our recent report, which notes that we were told that

“88 per cent progress had been made to a stable and secure Afghanistan.”

It is a promising statistic, but when we examined it further we were told that

“the performance was not 88 per cent against a full range of indicators of what is happening in Afghanistan, for example on the quality of governance, the economy and security.”

In that case, what is the point of such a statistic in the MOD’s annual report and accounts? We can debate at length the different aspects of decision making and allocation of resources, but until we have proper accountability and measurement of outcomes we cannot have real change in future outcomes and conduct in our MOD. We need to change the culture. We need real accountability, with consequences. We need to measure outcomes so that effective decision making can be built on well into the future.