Situation in the Red Sea
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(10 months ago)
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James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) on a very wide-ranging speech, albeit somewhat remote from the situation in the Red sea, as you correctly pointed out, Mr Deputy Speaker. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the new Defence Secretary, who is not in his place, and the shadow Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who both spoke with great care, diplomacy and sense. They fulfilled precisely what this place ought to be about, namely His Majesty’s Government laying out their views and the loyal Opposition scrutinising what they have done.
Before I say anything else, I make it clear that I strongly support the strikes in the Red sea and all the remarks made by my hon. Friends, most of whom are much better informed on these matters than me. I strongly support the strikes, the way they were carried out and the reasoning for them.
If I may, I will take a slightly different approach—rather than simply the diplomatic, foreign affairs and military approaches—and look at the way in which the strikes were ordered. Particularly after the first strike, a great many people, including a number of people in this House—perhaps we will hear from the Liberal Democrats later on—were of the view that it was quite wrong. “The House should be recalled,” they said. “We should have a vote in this House on whether the strikes were justified,” it was said. “It was quite wrong that Parliament should not have the opportunity to express our views on the most important matter facing us all, namely warfare,” it was said. I am glad to say that the Government resisted those calls, and the way in which the strikes were ordered seemed—I will come back to precisely why in a moment—to be absolutely right.
I have been talking about this subject for some time. Indeed, I wrote a book about it, which, if I may say so, is available in all good bookshops. When I expressed the view in a debate some 15 or 20 years ago that it was wrong that the House of Commons should vote on going to war, it was greeted widely with scorn. Everybody said, “That’s absurd; that’s a ridiculous thing to say.” We can check Hansard for that. Indeed, when Lord Hague wrote an extensive article on the matter, he said very straightforwardly and simply, “When we go to war, the House of Commons and the House of Lords must decide on it. It must be done by a vote.” I am glad to say that last week the noble Lord Hague went through a damascene conversion. He has changed his mind on the matter and now entirely supports my view. Equally in my view, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which wrote a report on these matters, got it wrong. It said that it thought the House of Commons should have a vote before deployment. I take a stringently different view, because there is a large number of very important reasons why that should not be the case.
First, all pretence of secrecy would of course be destroyed. We would have a debate in this place, and the enemy would know precisely what we were planning to do. Secondly, we could not take that kind of decision without consulting our neighbours. The decision might well be part of a NATO strike or, in this case, a joint UK-US strike. Are we ready to ask NATO, the United Nations or the US to wait while we discuss the matter here? What happens if we vote against it here, but those wherever else vote in favour?
Thirdly, we are galloping down a very dangerous road if we ask the Prime Minister to come to this House and share with us the secret intelligence, legal advice and strategic knowledge on which he makes these difficult decisions, as he would be exposing many of our professional supporters to criticism or, indeed, to attack one way or another. It would be quite wrong if he did so. I do not want to know the secret intelligence. I do not want to know the legal advice. I want the right to scrutinise what the Government have done after they have done it.
It is also extremely important that warfare should not be politicised. If we vote in this House either to go to war or not to do so, we as MPs are taking a view of it. We are sending people to war while squabbling among ourselves about whether the war is right, wrong or indifferent. That seems to me quite wrong from the point of view of the families, particularly of those who are killed, who would then say, “Well, one party or the other took a strongly different view from you.”
Before I come to the final reason for my strong views on this matter, I must point out to the House that, of the 274 wars that England has taken part in since 1750, we have voted in this House on only two. Only twice in all those years have we voted prior to deployment. The first time was in 2003, when Tony Blair asked this House to vote on Iraq and whipped the Labour party into supporting the war. The Conservative party was also whipped; I am glad to say I rebelled against the Whip, but none the less we were whipped into supporting the war, and what a bad decision that was—quite the wrong decision.
The second time in all that 300-year to 400-year history that we had a vote in this House on going to war was before a potential Syria strike in 2013, which did not then occur. The House voted against it, and very much of the bloodshed, the corruption and the disaster that we see in Syria to this day comes about as a result of those votes. America followed us the next day and equally did not strike against the use of chemical weapons. That was a wrong decision made by this House, as in my view was the Iraq decision of 2003, and those are the only two occasions when, prior to deployment, we have voted.
Sir Julian Lewis
I am afraid I do. I agree with my hon. Friend’s main thrust, that there is no doubt that the Prime Minister and the Executive have the right to take initial action and seek support afterwards. Having said that, the case of Syria in particular has become a byword for a wrong and terrible decision, because the ghastly Assad remained in power, but the alternative would have been another Islamist swamp such as we saw in Libya. It was because there was a strong feeling in the House that Syria would have been another Iraq or another Libya that there was such pressure to have a vote. For my part, I think the result was absolutely right.
Ukraine
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis
Dr Lewis
Yes, I am aware of that. And I feel that the more attention we draw to her courage and bravery in showing up the ruthless nature of the regime which Vladimir Putin embodies, the more likely it is that perhaps Russia will think twice before it goes even further than it already has.
James Gray
Will my right hon. Friend and the whole House join me in also paying tribute to the American Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, who has been killed outside Kyiv?
Dr Lewis
Yes, indeed. Politicians often have harsh words to say about journalists, but I wonder how many politicians would put themselves at risk in the way in which so many journalists—American, BBC, Sky and all the other British journalists—are doing. Let us remember that when we are listening to reports about incoming missiles, those brave men and women are reporting from the very targets on which those missiles are ranged.
Near the end of the second world war, the joint intelligence sub-committee of the British chiefs of staff produced a report entitled “Relations with the Russians”. From years of experience of the Anglo-Soviet alliance against Nazi Germany, the JIC concluded that Russia would respect only strength as the basis for any future relationship.
According to the sneering psychopath Mr Putin, what his country is engaged in at the moment is a holy war against Ukrainian neo-Nazis. What he fails to remind people is that the second world war, with which he presumes to draw comparisons, was enabled only by the vicious agreement between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to carve out Poland as a result of a secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. When people in this country ask which event started the second world war, it is not enough to say that it was the Nazi invasion of Poland. It was the Nazi-Soviet agreement to invade Poland 16 days apart: Nazis from the west and Soviet Russia from the east.
Vladimir Putin is a product of that history and of that system. He earned his spurs in the KGB, schooled in the suppression of captive countries, steeped in the culture of communist domination and filled with regret that the Soviet empire imploded. According to him, its break-up was the greatest disaster of the 20th century—a revealing and curious choice when compared with the millions killed in two world wars, in the Russian civil war and in the forced collectivisations, the mass deportations and the hell of the Soviet gulag. Until the Bolshevik revolution came along, there had been a significant chance of Russia evolving along democratic lines, but then the cancer of Marxism-Leninism gave cynical psychopaths like him their ideological excuse to seize total control. Their opponents were denounced as enemies of the people and were put, or worked, to death with no semblance of due process.
Now that ideology has gone, but the ruthless mindset remains. Russian leaders no longer claim to be building a workers’ paradise, but they still believe that western capitalists will sell them the rope with which to be hanged.
Self-defence Training in Schools
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(4 years, 8 months ago)
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James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered self-defence training in schools
I will start by talking about allied matters to do with the tragic murder in May last year of my constituent Ellie Gould, and by giving some background to the case. The primary purpose of the debate is to call for greater teaching on self-defence in schools, but the reason why Ellie Gould’s friends and relations are calling for that is worthy of explanation.
On 3 May last year 17-year-old Thomas Griffiths brutally stabbed and murdered his ex-girlfriend in a frenzied and horrific attack in Calne, in my constituency. Nothing could be worse for Ellie’s parents, Matt and Carole, than to lose their dear daughter, nor for a wide group of schoolfriends from Hardenhuish School in Chippenham than to lose their dear friend. That it happened in that particularly brutal way is absolutely heartbreaking, and I am sure the whole House will join me in offering Ellie’s family and friends our heartfelt sympathy on their loss.
Despite the terrible tragedy of Ellie’s death, the family are determined to try to find ways of making something positive come out of it. They have been active in seeking routes by which they can achieve that, to try to help in some small way to prevent a similarly awful thing from happening again in the future.
The family firmly believe that the sentence passed on Thomas Griffiths should have been a strong deterrent to others. They were deeply disappointed by the 12 and half years handed down, which they and I view as being woefully inadequate. They sought to persuade the Attorney General to appeal against its leniency, and the Home Secretary at the time was most generous with her time, meeting the Goulds and sympathising with their call for tougher sentencing. She said it was clear that the punishment must fit the crime. In this case it most certainly does not.
Most recently, the Lord Chancellor met the Goulds to discuss the case, especially the question of sentencing, but despite that the Attorney General refused to accept that the sentence was too lenient, largely because at the time of the murder Griffiths was only 17, albeit nearly 18. Had he been 18, he would almost certainly have gone to prison for 25 years. Because he was a month short of that age, he was given only 12 and a half years. The Goulds argue—and the Lord Chancellor recently rather agreed—that there must be some way of bringing in a sliding scale of sentencing, so if someone is just under the age of 18, the courts can take account of that and provide a heavier sentence than they would give to a juvenile. I hope that in memory of the tragic death of Ellie Gould the Lord Chancellor will consider that matter further—I believe he is doing so—and that the Wessex area Crown prosecutor will agree to a meeting that we have requested for the family in the near future.
We have been active with the Home Secretary and the Victims’ Commissioner about several aspects of the way in which the case was handled. The Goulds have nothing but the highest praise for Wiltshire police, who handled the case with great sensitivity throughout. We are concerned about the parole terms for so-called young offenders and the possibility that Griffiths will be released before the end of his inadequate 12 and a half year sentence, simply because he was under 18 at the time of the crime. That entirely flies in the face of the judge’s remarks at the trial that he would serve the full 12 and half years. We are concerned that the final three years will be served in an open prison. We also spotted a flaw in the parole terms for the release of murderers, noting that there is nothing to prevent them from changing their name by deed poll while they are in prison. While Thomas Griffiths will not be welcome in Calne or anywhere nearby, if he were to turn up with the name John Smith it would be much harder to track him or to know he was there.
You have been kind, Mr Hollobone, to allow me set out these matters, as they are largely for the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor, rather than for the Minister. None the less, I hope that setting out the case has re-emphasised the reason for having this debate about education matters.
Ellie Gould’s close school friends, Ellie Welling, Harriet Adams and Tilda Offen, have been active in finding ways to commemorate Ellie’s sad death in a positive way. They feel that Ellie, like other such victims, was ill-equipped to spot when a relationship has turned toxic, as occurred between Griffiths and Ellie herself. They feel that we could improve the understanding of relationships that go sour by improving the personal, citizenship, social and health education syllabus, so people can understand relationships as well as the broader issues considered in that subject. Without alarming them too much, students ought to be made aware that relationships can go wrong and that it can result in violence. They should be taught how to watch out for signs of a relationship going sour and be ready for any violence that might occur as a result.
We welcomed the letter from the Minister for School Standards in September, in which he told us that relationships education will be made compulsory in all secondary schools from later this year—perhaps the Minister will expand on that in her remarks—and that that education would
“be designed to equip pupils for adult life and to be able to manage risk in a variety of situations… The Statutory Guidance explains how these new subjects will help address the underlying causes of crime, such as respect and building positive relationships, as well as appropriate ways of resolving conflict.”
That is exactly what we want—PCSHE education that equips young people for all the turbulence of modern life, where relationships can turn sour with terrible consequences. We hope that our little bit of lobbying on this subject may have helped the Department to move the Minister in the right direction. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reassurances about that later.
The tireless trio of Ellie’s friends, supported by a wider friendship group in and around Hardenhuish School, Clane and Chippenham, have secondly come up with what seems to me to be an eminently sensible proposal, which if implemented in part or in full would be a further worthwhile memorial to Ellie Gould. They argue, and I agree, that young people are ill-equipped to deal with personal attacks of all sorts. Sadly they are becoming more common, whether they are low-level attacks in the playground, sexual approaches of one kind or another, physical attacks, bodily harm and even murder. Young people come across those types of attack all the time and sadly they are ill-equipped to deal with them.
For that reason Ellie Welling and her friends have developed a busy campaign to try to persuade the authorities, the Minister, the Department and schools that there should be compulsory teaching of self-defence in schools. They believe that if schools have to teach swimming or road safety, for example, then surely the basics of self-defence should be a prerequisite. If we turn out young students with a basic understanding of how to defend themselves on the street after they leave school, we will have made Britain a better place and society a great deal safer. We are not talking about advanced or complicated mechanisms for self-defence, but the basics with which a young person might fend off potential attackers.
Ellie Welling and her friends have been successful in getting significant media coverage for their campaign, which has resulted in a huge correspondence from around the nation, with all sorts of people and schools agreeing with them that they would like to do more about teaching self-defence. They have learned from countless letters that personal attacks are among the highest concerns of young people today, particularly when they get ready for university. They want the basic skills to be able to deal with these kinds of attacks.
I recently had an unnerving experience when Ellie’s friends arranged a one-day pilot course in a gym near Chippenham to demonstrate the self-defence techniques that might be taught. I am concerned to admit that, together with my stick, I was made to be one of the attackers. I lasted about 15 seconds before I was on the floor. They were very effective in dealing even with a big chap like me.
The training is basic. If an assailant grabs someone, they have to get him or her off, shout, make as much noise as possible, and get out of it. People have to shout and escape, but to escape they have to get rid of the assailant. The assailant might grab their arm, for example, or come from behind and put them in a neck-lock, or approach with a knife and threaten them—there are a variety of attacks. Young people need to understand the basics of how to get away from someone who is assaulting their person.
Such training is basic and pretty obvious, but terribly important. The fact that it is basic and obvious is the point of this debate. We are not asking for something very complicated or that will cost the state an enormous amount of money. Basic self-defence teaching can be done during physical training in the ordinary course of events in the school year. We do not want large amounts of money spent or complicated self-defence mechanisms taught. We want the basics. We simply want young people to leave school with an understanding of how they can conduct themselves in a dangerous world.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am very interested in the case that my hon. Friend makes. Does he see any role in this scenario for the simple personal alarms with which Members of the House have been recently equipped? They are easy to operate and make a tremendous noise, which could well stave off an attacker.
James Gray
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely interesting suggestion. No doubt that could form part of it. It would of course involve spending money, but what we propose would be largely free of charge to the state and would merely involve a slight change in the curriculum. However, my right hon. Friend is right to think of a personal alarm, which is often a useful to thing to have and perhaps might form part of how we take the agenda forward, so I am most grateful to him for his suggestion.
Incidentally, Mr Hollobone, it is a pleasure to sit under someone who shares the same birthday— 7 November, should anyone want to know.
James Gray
It would be wrong if I impugned the Chair on any kind of view on any matter. He is here merely to keep order.
We argue for self-defence training because we believe a little basic training in schools might be sufficient to deter or prevent a range of lower level personal attacks. All we are talking about is five minutes a week in a PT class: low-level training, perhaps provided by outside professionals in the same way as music or sports teachers often come into school on a weekly basis and provide a basic level of training.
Inspired by Ellie’s friends, I raised the matter with the Minister for School Standards by letter, and he responded on 3 February, saying perfectly reasonably:
“It is a matter for schools to decide whether to provide self-defence lessons for their pupils. Schools are free to organise and deliver a diverse and challenging PE curriculum that suits the needs of all their pupils. Schools are best placed to decide what is appropriate for their pupils and how to provide it.”
Now, far be it from me to argue with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), who is a very old friend and a distinguished expert, but I feel that his answer was rather weak. If we believe that some degree of self-defence is a good thing for our students as they leave school and go out into the wider world, it is surely possible for the Minister, the Government, the community and society to encourage schools up and down the land to take up the idea without prescribing to schools and without laying it down in the curriculum. We are simply talking about individual headteachers and chairs of governors taking it up. We are not talking about prescribing it in the curriculum. We merely suggest that if we believe self-defence is a good thing, for heaven’s sake let us find a way of making sure schools provide it.
I do not want the Department for Education to dictate what is taught in school. I believe in freedom for schools to decide, but the overwhelming response that we received following recent publicity on this matter should lead the Department to at least be relatively enthusiastic about providing basic self-defence tuition for our young people.
I welcome the Minister to her place and look forward to her response. We ask her to acknowledge the benefit that would be derived from universal or widespread teaching of basic self-defence techniques in schools across England. If she were to encourage it, help to enable it, and increase discussion of it, even without prescription from on high, schools would explore ways of providing such tuition. All we want is a ministerial acknowledgement of the need for self-defence, a general acceptance that it could be done without a great increase in resources, and a much wider realisation of the good that it would do. I hope that the Minister and the House will agree with me that if we knew that the cohort of young people leaving our schools today had had some level of training in self-defence, alongside the range of measures that the Government are putting in place with regard to knife crime, it would make our streets and towns and cities safer places.
If the Minister could give us some encouragement that she generally favours increased self-defence tuition in schools, she would by that alone be making a little gesture in memory of Ellie Gould’s tragic death.
Defence
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(6 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Lewis
My right hon. Friend speaks with great experience as a former Armed Forces Minister, and he made a considerable input to our recent report, “Gambling on ‘Efficiency’: Defence Acquisition and Procurement”, by making that very point.
Quite rightly, the hon. Member for Gedling emphasised the current process involving the national security capability review, and he focused on the question of fiscal neutrality, which the National Security Adviser says he has been told to observe. When I challenged the National Security Adviser with that on 18 December, when he appeared before the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, he said, “Well, it’s not as if the defence budget isn’t growing; it is fiscal neutrality within a growing budget.” He then did something else, which is indicative of a worrying trend: he lumped together the £36 billion that we are spending avowedly on defence with all the other money that we spend on everything else related to security, and he started talking about a £56 billion budget. That lumping together of money for security and intelligence services, counter-terrorism and even the relevant aspects of policing with the defence budget, is a form of sleight of hand that causes me concern. That is what I wish to address in the second half of my remarks.
We have a real problem in this country because the tried and tested system for strategic decision making has broken down. In my years as a research student, my area of study was the way that Britain planned towards the end of the second world war, and the early period after it, for what form of strategy we would need to deal with future threats. I was struck by the fact that there was a huge argument between 1944 and 1946 between clever officials in the Foreign Office who wanted to make the Anglo-Soviet alliance of 1942 the cornerstone of our post-war foreign policy, and the Chiefs of Staff who wanted to prepare their assessments of what Britain might have to face militarily on alternative assumptions that that alliance might well continue—in which case all would be well—but that it might break down. There was a tremendous stand-off until 1946, when finally the iron curtain had descended and it became clear that the Chiefs of Staff, who had looked at the Anglo-Soviet alliance in theoretical terms and said, “Well it could work, but it might not”, had been right to be cautious, and the Foreign Office staff, who wanted to put all their eggs in the basket of being able to continue the wartime alliance into peacetime, had been wrong. I was very struck by the systematic way in which the strategic arguments were hammered out, and at the centre of it all was the Chiefs of Staff Committee.
The Chiefs of Staff Committee, as we all know, is made up of the heads of each of the three services. The shocking thing that I have to say to the House today is that one can now become chief of staff of any of the three armed services—one can become head of the Royal Navy, or head of the Army, or head of the Royal Air Force—and yet have no direct input into the strategic planning process. This is all part of the lumping together of military strategic planning with national security strategies that are vague and amorphous and, above all, primarily in the hands of civil servants.
If the civil servants themselves were steeped, as they used to be, in the subject matter of their Departments, that would be less of a problem than it is today. But some years ago, it was decided that those in the senior levels of the civil service—which are, of course, peopled by very clever and able individuals; that is not in dispute—should be able to hop from one Department to another. One might be at a senior level in one Department and then go for the top job in another, including, for example, the Ministry of Defence. What we have is a combination where formerly specialist civil servants have become generalists and the professional military advisers—the Chiefs of Staff—have become more like business managers serving as chief executives with an allocated budget to administer to their services. All their thoughts about strategy get fed through just one single individual—the Chief of the Defence Staff—who then has to represent all their views on the National Security Council. It is this melding together, this mishmash, of the military, the security and the civilian roles that is undermining what we need, which is a clear-headed and systematic approach to the strategic challenges facing this country.
James Gray
My right hon. Friend is making an extremely important point about the whole structure of decision making within the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence. Does he agree that he has not yet mentioned a very important element in that, namely Ministers? He has not yet discussed Ministers’ role in considering the strategy of the nation. Is it not particularly interesting that when Sir Mark Sedwill appeared before the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy the other day, he let us know that the review that is currently being undertaken by his Department was commissioned during the general election campaign, when presumably Ministers had their minds on something else? I would be interested to know exactly who it was who commissioned the strategy at that particular time.
Dr Lewis
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he made a very useful contribution to the questioning of Mark Sedwill on 18 December. The reason I have not really mentioned Ministers is that, frankly, Ministers do not seem to be having much of a role in this, either. What I did not say, because I did not want to dwell too long on it, is that the stand-off between the Chiefs of Staff and the Foreign Office in 1944 was finally resolved when it went all the way up to Churchill, who finally gave the Chiefs of Staff permission to continue doing the contingency planning for a possibly hostile Soviet Union that they wanted to do, and that the Foreign Office did not want them to do. The reality here is that there has been a loss of focus. There is no proper machinery, other than this rather woolly concept of a National Security Council, served by a secretariat, run effectively by the Cabinet Office.
In conclusion, what I really want to say is this. Constitutionally, we know what is right. That was confirmed when we spoke to the former Secretary of State for Defence in the Defence Committee and he was attended by a senior MOD official. We asked him, “Is it still the case that the Chiefs of Staff—the heads of the armed forces—retain the right to go directly to No. 10 if they think the danger to the country is such that they have to make direct representations?” The answer was yes, it is. But what is the point of their having that right if they are not actually allowed to do the job of planning the strategies and doing what they used to do as a Committee —serving as the military advisers to the Government? As my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) says, ultimately, the Government always have the right to accept or reject such military advice as they get from the service chiefs, but the service chiefs ought to be in a position to give that advice.
Defence Expenditure
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(8 years ago)
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Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Second Report from the Defence Committee of Session 2015-16, Shifting the goalposts? Defence expenditure and the 2% pledge, HC 494, and the Government response, HC 465.
It is a privilege to present the findings of our report entitled “Shifting the goalposts? Defence expenditure and the 2% pledge” to the public once again—it was published some time ago. I doubt whether anybody two or three years ago would have registered the significance of the term “2% of GDP” in connection with defence, because it was only relatively recently that the prospect of Britain’s falling below the NATO recommended minimum expenditure on defence for the first time came to the public’s attention. For many years, we spent a great deal of money on defence. The purpose of the report is to track the history of that expenditure to check the extent to which we are continuing to meet the NATO minimum and to see whether there has been any financial jiggery-pokery to enable us to do so.
In a nutshell, we found that no rules have been broken. The Government’s figures and methodology conform to the NATO guidelines. It is true that, on the basis of including such things as armed forces pensions, which were not previously included but are allowed to be included, the Government will reach the 2% minimum. I use the word “minimum” advisedly, because that is what it is. It is not a target, but the minimum expected of each NATO country to contribute as a proportion of their gross domestic product to their defence. One could argue that it remains a target for countries that have never managed to reach it, but for those of us who have always exceeded it, often by very large amounts, it remains a floor, not a target, let alone a ceiling.
I know it is frowned upon to use props in debates in any Chamber, but the sheet of paper I have is so vivid that, even at a considerable distance and through the lens of a television camera, it is easy to read. The bar graph shows a consistent and steady decline in the percentage of GDP spent on defence since the mid-1950s. In the mid-1950s, we spent more than 7% of GDP on defence. In about 1963-64, that downward-falling graph crossed the upward-rising graph of what we spent as a proportion of GDP on welfare. Far from spending more on defence than on welfare, as we did until about 1963, we spend six times on welfare what we spend on defence. In the mid-1980s, we were spending roughly the same amount on defence, education and health. Since then, the descending graphs for defence expenditure and the rising graph for education and health have similarly crossed over, and we have declined closer to the 2% minimum. We now spend almost four times on health and about two and a half times on education what we spend on defence.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I am interested in the chart that my right hon. Friend is describing, which appears as a corrigendum to our report. More interesting than the three Departments he mentions is the fact that, during that period, spending on overseas aid increased by a significant amount while spending on defence declined. Is that not a significant correlation?
Dr Lewis
It is significant, and it is indeed included on the chart. The only reason why I did not mention it is that, in comparison with the total spent on the other high-spending Departments, it is a relatively small proportion of our GDP. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right because, such has been the decline in defence, our commitment to spend 0.7% on international development now amounts to one third of the total that we spend on defence, which comes in just above the 2% minimum.
When we called the report “Shifting the goalposts?”, we put a question mark at the end because we did not wish to prejudge it. There are two ways in which the Government could be said to have shifted the goalposts: first, by including things they are not allowed to include—we absolved them of that—and, secondly, by including things that they are allowed to include but never included in the past, which would mean that we are not comparing like with like in terms of our previous methods of calculating UK defence expenditure. The Defence Committee inquiry found that the NATO minimum would not have been fulfilled if UK accounting practices had not been modified, albeit in ways that are permitted by the NATO guidelines.
Dr Lewis
We did not find a hard and fast case of double counting, but we noticed in the past that there are items of expenditure that are highly relevant to defence and security that could fairly and usefully be catered for by the international development funds. Given that the 0.7% is protected, and given that one sometimes hears stories of the Department for International Development struggling to find creative ways of spending the money it has to dispose of, there is an opportunity, particularly in relation to soft power, to use elements of the international development money for measures that add to our security.
Of course, this is a rather crude measure, because gross domestic product can vary. If this country’s gross domestic product goes down but we spend the same amount on defence, it might appear that we are doing more when we are doing nothing of the sort. Similarly, when the value of the pound changes, as has happened in the short term following the Brexit decision, we see the effect on what we are able to buy for the money we have available for defence when we purchase big-ticket items such as the P-8 maritime patrol aircraft from the Americans, although a considerable amount of that purchase will find its way to the British defence industry. What I am driving at is that perhaps we ought to be talking not about shifting the goalposts, but trying to move the benchmark.
We should be reminding people that, in the 1980s—the last time we faced a significant threat from the east in Europe in the second and closing phase of the cold war—we regularly spent between 4.5% and 5.1% of GDP on defence. The similarity lies not only in the international situation. In the 1980s, we simultaneously faced a very significant terrorist threat in the form of Irish republican terrorism. We now face a similar threat in the form of fundamentalist Islamist terrorism.
It therefore seems appropriate to note that and, in the week that we were told that the first of the successor submarines for the nuclear deterrent will be named HMS Dreadnought, to remember a previous HMS Dreadnought, the battleship that changed the whole nature of sea power as far as capital ships were concerned in the years approaching the first world war. A famous naval arms race was going on between this country and Germany and, around 1909, there was a great deal of controversy that the German navy was drawing level with the grand fleet of the British Royal Navy in terms of dreadnought battleships. A public campaign was mounted, encapsulated by the phrase of the Unionist politician George Wyndham:
“We want eight and we won’t wait!”
My view, which I believe is shared by at least some other members of the Defence Committee, is that a new benchmark is perhaps needed for the percentage of GPD to be spent on defence: “We want three to keep us free!” In reality, if we go on at the 2% level, we are in danger of finding ourselves incapable of meeting the threats that face us today and will continue to face us in future.
Select Committee on Defence
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Lewis
Yes, indeed, and I thank the hon. Lady for that. She is a tremendously supportive member of the Committee; this is her first parliamentary term, but she has made a great start. I re-emphasise what I said about the importance of dialogue with Russia. The fact remains that different societies develop at different stages and go through different phases in their attitude to their relationships with the rest of the world. One mistake that the west clearly made after the downfall of communism was to evoke a degree of triumphalism at a time when magnanimity would have been more appropriate. Those in the west make a terrible mistake if they fail to recognise that Russia is and always has been a great power, and what we have to do is reach out the hand of friendship, while trying to discourage those aspects of the Russian tradition that seek to dominate lands beyond its own borders. Russia is a pretty large landmass and one would hope that the Russians could make a success of running their own country without feeling the need to impose their will on their neighbours.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Potential Russian expansionism must be deterred by NATO with a fist of steel—there is no question about that, as we cannot let them do it—but one encased in a velvet glove. At the moment, we do not understand Russia and what it is doing. We must find better ways of understanding the Russians and talking to them about it. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one area where we simply do not know what they are doing is in the high north—in the Arctic? Russia is, without question, expanding its military capabilities up there and we do not quite know why. Does he agree that that was one area the report was not able to look into, and is there not room for further work on that?
Dr Lewis
I agree with every word my hon. Friend has said. Our report drops a very broad hint that the Arctic—the high north—deserves special attention, and I strongly suspect that if and when the Committee takes a decision to give it that special attention, my hon. Friend, who has led the way, with his all-party group for polar regions, in alerting the country to the significance of this area, will be playing a very prominent part indeed.
Britain and International Security
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr James Gray
I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend to make such a tiny point. It is most kind of him to describe me as “gallant”, but I was only ever a private soldier in the Territorial Army. Surrounded as I am by brave soldiers who truly deserve the title, I should say that I am not in any shape, size or form “gallant”.
Dr Lewis
My hon. Friend is, in my eyes, as gallant as they come.
In my hon. Friend’s intervention, he drew attention—he was kind enough to give me the copy of the news article to which he referred—to what the head of the BBC had said. According to today’s edition of The Times:
“The head of the BBC has refused demands from 120 MPs to drop the term Islamic State on the ground that its coverage of the terrorist group must be impartial. Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the director-general, warned that an alternative name for the militants was ‘pejorative’ and said that the broadcaster needed to ‘preserve the BBC’s impartiality’.”
I have news for Lord Hall. I am well familiar with the concept of impartiality that applies to the BBC and independent television. I used to look into it decades ago. It is not absolute impartiality. The example that is always given is that there is no need for the media to be impartial between the arsonist and the fire brigade. The BBC is required to show due impartiality, which does not mean that it has to be impartial between terrorists and constitutionally constituted Governments and their armed forces. Lord Hall would do well to reflect on how he would react if somebody from his ranks of well-paid BBC executives said that the corporation needs to be impartial between the Nazis and the forces that fought them. He would not stand up for that suggestion for a moment.
Defence Reform Bill
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(11 years ago)
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Dr Lewis
If the hon. Gentleman had not been absent, he would have heard the great deal of discussion that took place about the priority of defence in the nation’s schedule of priorities. If he had made that bogus, so-called point of order having been here, I would have had some time for him, but given that he did not even have the courtesy to listen to the debate before making it, it was unworthy.
The reality is that a nation gets the defence forces it is prepared to pay for and it can decide what level of services it will fund—whether that involves cuts in the Army, the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force that could be avoided.
The next question is whether this scheme for the reserves was linked to the proposed cut in the size of the Army. As I said, if this scheme had been put forward on its own, I could have wholeheartedly supported it, but it was not. It was specifically put forward as a compensating factor for the Army’s regular strength being reduced by 20,000. We were told that that reduction would be compensated for by the 30,000 increase in reserves. Now we are told that that linkage no longer exists. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire asked what we will do if we find that in fact the reserve scheme is not working. If I understood him correctly—I think I did—he said that, by the time we discovered that we were not going to get the 30,000 reservists, it would be too late to regenerate any of the loss in the 20,000 regulars. [Interruption.] He seems to be indicating that I have understood him correctly. If that is the case, I take great exception to the fact that this linkage was ever made in the first place.
If we are to be told that we have to accept cuts in this country’s defence capability, we should be told that honestly. We should not constantly be confronted with shifting goalposts. If the recruitment of 30,000 reservists may or may not be achieved, and if the 20,000 cut in regulars will happen nevertheless and is irreversible, we should have been told that at the outset. [Interruption.] Somebody says, “We were.” Who said that?
Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Mr Walker, as a master of parliamentary procedure, you will know that when participating in a debate, one is not supposed to refer to the presence of anyone outside the confines of the Chamber. However, I am sure that you will allow me to say what a pleasure it is to know that Sir Neil and Sheila Thorne are present today to hear all the wonderful tributes to them and, as I am sure they would be the first to acknowledge, to hear the tributes that must be made to the civilian and uniformed staff of the Ministry of Defence over 25 years for their huge efforts in arranging the visits from the armed forces’ side.
It is a real honour to make the last speech by a Back Bencher in a debate about a scheme that has been an unalloyed and phenomenal success for a quarter of a century. I am delighted that this is one of those debates in which one can honestly feel that one agrees with every sentiment expressed so far.
The scheme has many things to recommend it, and I will pick up one or two of them in the time available. Both the Labour members of the Defence Committee, the hon. Members for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), referred to the sense of involvement in and participation with the armed forces, and to the difference between visits to the armed forces wearing their civilian suits as Committee members and wearing whatever variation of military uniform they have been privileged to wear on their scheme visits. I know that lawyers have been taking a close look at that, but I assure hon. Members that if we simply revert to being civilians visiting the military, something very precious will be lost from the scheme. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I am delighted that colleagues are endorsing that with various signals, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) will do so explicitly.
Mr Gray
May I take the opportunity absolutely to reassure my hon. Friend that we most certainly will not return to civilian dress during those visits? There is a debate about exactly what we wear, when and how we wear it and the legalities, but he is absolutely right to say that appearing on visits in some form of dress appropriate to the occasion is definitely what the future will hold.
Dr Lewis
I could not have expected or desired a more reassuring comment.
I now look for a second reassuring comment. I will not get it immediately, but I am looking to my old Front-Bench colleague of many years’ standing on the former shadow defence team—he is now, thank goodness, the Minister—to address what one might call the issue of trust. The reason why the scheme has worked so well is that people have been given privileged access to members of the armed forces at every level. There has been, as it were, an unwritten understanding that that privilege would not be abused. When one considers the very large numbers of colleagues of all parties who have been through the scheme, it is remarkable that there have been hardly any cases—in the low single figures—of raised eyebrows about someone going on the scheme and immediately tabling a raft of hostile questions on the Floor of the House.
That excellent outcome is very different from what might have been predicted at the start of the process. As something of an amateur military historian, I look forward to the day when I can go to the National Archives at Kew and look for the file of correspondence that must exist relating to the period in which Sir Neil originally approached the Ministry of Defence to propose that MPs have direct informal access to all ranks of the armed forces.
Defence Personnel
Debate between James Gray and Julian Lewis(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Gray
The Minister was simply overcome by the passion of what he was saying that he forgot one or two conventions of the House. I am most grateful to him for his extremely kind remarks.
The all-party armed forces group does a useful job. Many of its officers are in the Chamber today, and I am grateful to them for all the things they do. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) is chairman of the Army section of the all-party group, and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) is chairman of that part of the group that looks after the Royal Marines.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentioned the all-party group, so will he say a few words about the armed forces parliamentary scheme, with which he and I have long been associated, as well as about the magnificent work of Sir Neil Thorne and the amazing effect the scheme has had of creating links between parliamentarians and members of the armed forces?
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend not only anticipates what I was about to say but rips the heart out of the central part of the comments that I was about to make. I shall come to that subject in a moment.
The way in which the people of Britain respect our armed forces has changed over the years. It was unanimous after the second world war, as we knew what our armed forces had done for us through those years. At certain times since, there has been a similar increase in respect for them. There have also been periods, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, when people’s knowledge of and respect for our armed forces has been significantly lower.
I pay respect to my own constituents in Royal Wootton Bassett for the way in which they welcomed home the fallen soldiers for five or six years before handing back the duty to Brize Norton in the Prime Minister’s constituency. They spoke for the nation in paying their respects to the armed forces and the way in which they had served. They did so quietly, modestly and sensibly without pomp or ceremony. They simply stood in the high street getting wet and bowing their heads at the appropriate moment. They spoke for the people of Britain and the way in which we respect our armed forces.
A similar transition in attitudes has occurred here in Parliament. Following the retirement of brigadiers and soldiers who had served in the second world war from this place some 20 or 30 years ago, I suspect that our knowledge of and respect for our armed forces declined significantly for a time. That would have been around the late ’60s and early ’70s, when not much was happening of a military nature and most Members of Parliament who had been soldiers, sailors or airmen had retired.