UK Defence Spending

James Heappey Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (James Heappey)]

What a treat it has been for the MOD to have had the opportunity to debate defence matters so many times in Armed Forces Week. Of course urgent questions are not necessarily of our choosing, but it is important that those who serve our nation have seen the matters that concern them, their careers and their families debated so keenly in this week of all weeks. I thank also the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) who I believe was assisted by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) in securing today’s debate, and I thank them, too, for their contributions. Listening to the right hon. Gentleman’s speech and his many interventions thereafter, it was almost as if my Minister’s box had become an audio book as the parliamentary questions were all read out loud. The only problem is that all his PQs will be waiting for me in my actual box when I get back to it later today. I make light of this, but as other Front-Bench spokespeople have rightly said, the forensic way in which he holds us and our Department to account makes us better, and we are grateful. [Interruption.] Well, we are being nice to each other.

My right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East gave us a tour de force on the importance of maintaining our nuclear deterrent. I started today at 3 am in the former bunker in Corsham, where constituents of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and many other of his countrymen were fighting their way through the mine system as part of their final exercise. The importance of that deterrent was made vividly clear to me, as was the tremendous warrior spirit of the Ulster fighter. My right hon. Friend will appreciate that I cannot say which if any of the first three hypotheses he offered are the right ones for changing our stockpile, but I can absolutely confirm, as he suspected, that the fourth of his hypotheses is not the case.

The Chairman of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), eloquently paid tribute to our armed forces in his speech. Of course, it will come as no surprise to anybody in the House that Defence Ministers will always take more money for defence, but we cannot ignore the fact that the settlement that the MOD received from the Prime Minister—a multi-year settlement, which we have been asking for for many years and have now got—is a big deal. It puts the MOD finances into a place that they have not been for a long time, and while of course tough decisions remain, the reality is that for the first time the budget looks like it can be balanced and choices can be made based on military need, not because of accounting issues.

I commend to my right hon. Friend the experience of the 3rd Division, who have recently returned from the United States where they have been participating in Exercise Warfighter. The feedback from that exercise is a powerful demonstration of how the land battle is changing and has validated many of the decisions in the integrated review around trading mass in the close fight for more capability with precision deep fires.

My hon. Friends the Members for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) and for West Dorset (Chris Loder) extolled the quality of helicopters made in Somerset. They will get no argument from the MP for Wells. My hon. Friends the Members for Bracknell (James Sunderland) and for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) made fine speeches on the benefit of the generous defence settlement and extolled the virtues of the new technologies that area emerging and the requirement to employ them in our armed forces. Like so many hon. Members across the House, they also rightly championed the UK defence industry.

[John Spellar]

The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) would have difficulty intervening because of the current arrangements. If the Minister thinks the products from Yeovil are so worthy, why are they not being bought?

[James Heappey]

I expect the right hon. Gentleman knows that he puts me in a tricky situation as an MP from Somerset and a Minister in the MOD. You will not be surprised to hear, Mr Deputy Speaker, that such decisions are ultimately not for me. However, we can all be clear that the options for a helicopter made in the UK are keenly in the minds of Ministers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) spoke up strongly for the Royal Air Force and the amazing transformation we have had in our combat air forces. The hon. Member for Strangford asked a number of questions seeking reassurance about the shape and size of the Army and, therefore, its resilience going forward.

At the Army board yesterday, many innovative ideas were brought forward by the Chief of the General Staff for how we can get combat personnel from the back office and into the frontline. He asked me specifically to confirm that 72,500 is for trade-trained strength, and that is indeed the case. He is absolutely right that we must get after chronic undermanning and lack of deployability. That challenge has been set to the Army. This is a moment to get those things right.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not sure whether you were in the Chamber for the joy of the speech of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). I am afraid that it was remarkable only in that it stood out from the sensible and balanced contributions from everybody else who participated in the debate. Rather unsurprisingly, he was unwilling to support freedom of navigation in the south China sea or freedom of navigation in the Black sea; indeed, he was critical of the UK and our allies for seeking that. Of course, he was entirely mute on the Russian build-up of troops, combat aircraft and warships in the Black sea earlier this year. Unfortunately, his contribution was typically tone deaf in what was otherwise an excellent debate.

A number of issues have been raised, but first I want to say that the first duty of any Government is the defence of the realm and I know that Governments of all colours ensure that that is their priority. We may disagree on how it is done, but I do not doubt the motives of those who served in the Ministry of Defence before us, and those who will serve after us will always be keen to ensure that our brave armed forces have the resources that they need to do increasingly demanding jobs. However, with the constraints on resources growing, not least due to the pandemic, it is imperative that we deliver more punch for our pound and, indeed, that we become more relevant in an ever-changing battlespace. Even casual observers of defence will know that previous Governments of all colours have not necessarily always got that right. Our integrated review and the Command Paper that followed represent a radically different way of dealing with the defence budget and I welcome the opportunity to explain our thinking in more detail.

The approach is threefold. First, in the short term, it is about upping our spending. The threats to our nation are growing and they come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from a resurgent and increasingly more malign Russia to a rising China, and from global terror to the acceleration of a whole range of threats through climate change. Our adversaries are operating below the threshold of conflict and taking advantage of exponential advances in new technologies. We must invest to stay ahead of the curve. Recognition of the dangers that our nation faces prompted the Prime Minister last November to announce the biggest investment in the UK’s armed forces since the end of the cold war. In the next four years, we will inject more than £24 billion into defence. In total, we will spend in excess of £190 billion on equipment and equipment support in the next decade, including at least £6.6 billion on research and development.

I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East thinks that the ratio between defence spending and health spending is out of kilter—especially now that we are in the company of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. However, I know he will agree with me that the contribution the Prime Minister has made to the defence budget is none the less hugely significant and to be welcomed.

[John Spellar]

Will the Minister give way?

[James Heappey]

If the right hon. Gentleman will indulge me, I will make some progress, not least because he has intervened quite a few times in the debate already, but I will come back to him, I promise.

As I was saying, our defence spending will enable us to continue to meet our international obligations and remain a leader in NATO. Notably, we are one of 10 nations not just meeting but exceeding the alliance’s 2% target, reaffirmed at the recent Brussels summit. Separately, the International Institute for Strategic Studies places the UK fourth in the table of strongest military capabilities and defence economies, behind the USA, China, and India, but ahead of France, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Thanks to our boosted budget, we have been able to plug a potential black hole of some £7 billion on projected equipment spend. Some Members have already pointed out that last year’s National Audit Office report suggested the deficit could be deeper still, but that reflected the situation as it was then, not as it is now, following a multi-year settlement, new investment and the defence Command Paper. Together, those have allowed us to redress the imbalance of previous spending reviews.

That brings me to my second point. We have achieved this outcome only by taking tough choices, by refocusing defence on the threats, by honestly assessing what we can and will do, and by retiring legacy capabilities—our ageing tanks, oldest frigates and dated early-warning aircraft—to make way for new systems and approaches. I say in all honesty to colleagues across the House, as somebody who has knowingly served on operations on an outdated platform, that you take no solace from how many of them are in the MOD inventory if you know that they are out of date, you are not properly protected and they lack the lethality for the modern battle space. Coincidentally, there often appear to be the same voices criticising us for retiring legacy platforms as saying we are not doing enough to balance the books or eliminate the so-called “black hole”. You can’t have it both ways. President Eisenhower, no stranger to the military, put it well when he said there is

“one sure way to overspend. That is by overindulging sentimental attachments to outmoded military machines and concepts.”

So, yes, we have taken hard decisions, but they will enable our armed forces to make that rapid transition from mass mobilisation to information-age speed, readiness and relevance.

Those decisions will give us a force fit for the future, equipped with an advanced arsenal of capabilities across sea, land, air, space, and cyber. On the ground, our Army will be leaner but it will be more integrated, active and lethal. It will have revamped attack helicopters, brand new Boxer armoured fighting vehicles, state-of-the-art air defence, long-range precision artillery and new electronic warfare capabilities. At sea, our Royal Navy’s fleet is growing for the first time in years. It will have world-class general purpose frigates—to add to the Type 26 world-beating anti-submarine frigate—air defence destroyers, hunter-killer submarines and a new multi-role ocean surveillance capacity to safeguard our underwater cables in the north Atlantic. In the air, our RAF will benefit from updated Typhoons, brand new F-35 Lightning stealth fighters, new unmanned systems capable of striking remotely and a massive investment in next generation fighter jets and swarming drones. Meanwhile, our growing National Cyber Force will blend the cyber skills of the MOD and GCHQ to counter terror plots, disrupt hostile states or criminals, and support military operations, and our new Space Command will be able to defend our interests beyond our atmosphere.

Of course, we can have the best kit in the world but it counts for little unless we have the best people. Our military and civilian personnel have always been our finest asset and they must be looked after accordingly. That is why we are putting aside resource to help them, whether by investing around £1.5 billion in improving single living accommodation or by spending £1.4 billion over the next decade to provide wraparound childcare.

[John Spellar]

The Minister has kindly drawn attention to the fact that he is sitting alongside the Health Secretary, so will he take the opportunity to get him to cut through all the bureaucratic nonsense and make sure that our troops on deployment get their jabs?

[James Heappey]

As we heard at length when I was answering the urgent question yesterday, and as my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary said in the Select Committee meeting thereafter, when we made the case to my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary for jabs for missions that we felt could not be administered in line with age priorities, we were given them without question and we are grateful for that support. However, the judgment was made that we should not be prioritising fit, healthy young men and women in the armed forces at the expense of more elderly and vulnerable people and communities across the country. As I said many times yesterday, and as the Secretary of State said, we in the ministerial team stand behind that decision.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The challenge that the Minister is setting is that he will get things right for the people, as opposed to focusing just on the platforms. That is good. There is currently a £1.5 billion backlog of repairs in armed forces accommodation. Will he commit to a quarterly update on where that figure stands, to give a level of transparency that we do not currently have and to ensure that he delivers on the promises he is making at the Dispatch Box?

[James Heappey]

There is a term popular among those of us who have served in the military: volunteering a mucker for the guardroom. The Minister for Defence Procurement, my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) will, I am certain, have heard that request and he will no doubt write to the hon. Gentleman in due course to agree with him a mechanism for ensuring that progress is reported to him.

It is not enough to spend money wisely now; we must manage our money for the long term. In the past, over-ambitious and underfunded reviews led to successive years of short-term settlements, followed by short-term savings measures, funding pressures deferred and poor value for money for the taxpayer. However, by agreeing to a long-term multi-year settlement, we are redressing the balance. We are carving out space to deliver capability and drive commercial outcomes, commit investment in cash, fund transmissional activities and set a clear headmark for policy. We can at last tackle the root causes of some of the endemic and systemic problems faced by Defence, such as unwieldy procurement, and we can start to develop a sustainable plan for equipment.

Spending on defence is no different from any other large organisation. We must learn to live within our means. That is why the Department has taken the hard decisions to balance our spending plans, rationalise the estate and reduce operating costs as we modernise our equipment. That is also why we have been busy strengthening our financial capabilities. We are currently three years into a five-year programme to enhance the skills of our finance staff, improve cost forecasting and adopt a more realistic approach to risk. But our plan is not just about what we do internally. It is also about augmenting our relationship with industry.

[James Sunderland]

Does the Minister agree that the ability to write contracts, particularly within the MOD and the DE&S, is fundamental for giving the best possible value to our taxpayers?

[James Heappey]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. That is why the training and education programme within our workforce is so important. I do not think anybody in the House would argue that, in the past, MOD contractual negotiations have not gone swimmingly.

Our defence and security industrial strategy, published in March, is the first critical step in achieving all of this. It gives our sector partners more transparency and more clarity on our requirements, and provides for a more co-operative approach. Meanwhile, we will be bringing out a refreshed shipbuilding strategy to supercharge the sector. We are making sure that shipbuilding investment will double over the life of this Parliament to more than £1.7 billion a year. Our spending reforms are signalling that we are ready to create the jobs and skills that will help to level up our country, and ready to build on the talents of different areas—frigates in Scotland, satellites in Belfast, armoured vehicles in Wales and aircraft production in the north of England—to strengthen our Union.

In a competitive age, it is vital that we get our defence spending right. Failure to do this in years gone by has often cost our country dear, but we have upped our spending, transformed our approach and put in place a plan for the long term. We have aligned our resources and our ambition, and by giving our great men and women the tools they need to succeed, we are helping them to focus on what they do best: safeguarding our shores and advancing our interests throughout the world.

This week as we celebrate Armed Forces Week and look forward to Armed Forces Day, the Royal Navy has three capital ships at sea: HMS Prince of Wales in the Atlantic; HMS Albion returning from the Baltic; and HMS Queen Elizabeth in the Mediterranean. The Royal Navy is forward present in the south Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, and our submariners are maintaining the continuous at-sea deterrent beneath our oceans. The Army is part of NATO in Estonia and Ukraine, fighting violent extremism in Mali, Somalia, Nigeria and Ghana, and doing the same against Daesh in Iraq and against the Taliban, as well as keeping the Falklands secure. Our Air Force has our quick reaction alert pilots at high readiness to protect UK airspace, while Typhoon pilots in Cyprus participate in Operation Shader. As well as that, we have more Typhoon pilots in Romania on Op Biloxi and, of course, those on board the carrier with F-35.

[Dr Lewis]

I do not wish to inject a depressing note into proceedings, but the Minister mentioned the Taliban in Afghanistan. There are many of us who are very concerned about the announcement of a specific end date without a clear military support plan for the Government for which our troops have sacrificed so much. It does not sit well with the objectives that we set ourselves all those years ago in intervening in Afghanistan. I wonder whether he can say anything about that.

[James Heappey]

That could be the subject of an entire Backbench Business debate and I know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you are keen to move the business on. I will say two things in response to my right hon. Friend’s point. First, he gives me an opportunity to mark the enormous sacrifice of all British service personnel who have served in Afghanistan since 2003. They have done amazing things in an extraordinarily challenging country, and I know from my own experience soldiering there just how grim the grimmest days of that campaign were. He also rightly makes the point that Afghanistan has reached a crossroads. I stand by the argument that I made during the statement on our withdrawal from Afghanistan three or four weeks ago. I believe that it has forced a moment of political decision making in Afghanistan that would not otherwise have come, and I think it is right that the international community has done that, but we all, of course, share his concerns about what the future of the country might hold.

Yesterday, I had a number of opportunities to meet reservists who have been serving in the civil service throughout the last year. People have been involved in certifying vaccines and as part of distributing it around our country. To think that people have been doing that as their day job and then still finding time to serve in our armed forces at the weekend is the most amazing demonstration of just what wonderful people our reservists are. This morning, in the dead of night, in the land beneath Corsham in Wiltshire, I saw— in this case, men of Ulster, but they were representative of all our armed forces who are hugely professional—do the most incredible and amazing things in pitch black.

Being the Minister for the Armed Forces, is, in my view, the best job in Government. It is an honour to associate myself with these extraordinary people, especially as a veteran. I wish them all a happy Armed Forces Day and thank them for their service.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Had the Minister not told us that he had started the day at 3 am, I do not think any of us would have known. I call Kevan Jones for a two-minute wind-up.