Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Heappey and Richard Drax

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

There is no escaping the fact that the world is incredibly complicated at the moment. In the Euro-Atlantic, we face the challenge of Russia; in the middle east, the challenge of Iran and its proxies; in the Indo-Pacific, the growing competition with China; and then across Africa and other parts of the world there remains the challenge of violent extremism. At a time of such crisis, one would expect the armed forces to be as busy as they are. That does not mean that we should take for granted the effort that they are putting in, but if we were not reaching for them as extensively as we are right now, we would have to question when on earth we would reach for them, given the demands on our nation.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister for Armed Forces—I am very sad to hear that he is going. He talks of warfighting. As he knows, I am on the Defence Committee. I would challenge the idea that we are ready to fight a sustained war with the armed forces that we have, and bearing in mind all the threats that we face, that possibility has become very real. Bearing in mind that his collective responsibility is about to go, will he now stand at the Dispatch Box and say that we need to spend a lot more money on defence?

[James Heappey]

That will go soon, but not yet. Colleagues on both sides of the House will note that whenever I have been invited to respond to such a question, like all good Defence Ministers, I have never missed the opportunity to say yes, but the reality is that our armed forces remain fit. Yes, it is the job of this House and particularly my hon. Friend’s Committee to scrutinise our readiness, as the Committee has done—and I commend the report to colleagues who have not already read it—but reinvestment is needed to sustain our armed forces at warfighting level. That is no scandal; that is the consequence of a peace dividend that rightly allowed successive Governments to disinvest in the resilience that kept our cold war force credible. However, as the Secretary of State so rightly said in his speech the other week, we are now in a “pre-war era”, so it is the responsibility of this Government and those who follow to reinvest in the necessary warfighting capability.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Heappey and Richard Drax

Monday 11th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

Colleagues have rightly offered their condolences to the new Secretary of State, and remarked on the anniversary of 9/11, but the thing that has maybe fallen through the cracks is for us to send our regards to the former Secretary of State, with whom I had the great pleasure of working for three and a half years. His effort and contribution to defence was quite extraordinary, and I think he will be remembered in history as one of the great Secretaries of State. He should be very proud of everything he achieved.

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right that NATO’s southern flank, Africa, is of enormous importance to Europe and the security of the Euro-Atlantic. It will not surprise her to know that, in the wake of the coups over the summer in both Niger and Gabon, conversations among European Defence Ministers and NATO Defence Ministers have been regular and urgent as people seek to understand what the response could be. It does not look like it is one in which NATO would be to the fore, but it is clearly in NATO’s interests that a European response in Africa to these coups is forthcoming.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I send my condolences to the Secretary of State.

As my right hon. Friend knows, membership of NATO requires an expenditure of 2% of GDP. This is an arbitrary and paltry figure bearing in mind the threats that we all face. What discussions is he having with other NATO partners, many of which are not even spending the 2%, to increase their spending on defence?

[James Heappey]

I steer my hon. Friend to the communiqué from the Vilnius summit, which was very clear that NATO countries that are not yet spending 2% need urgently to increase their spending to do so. Our Prime Minister has gone further and indicated his willingness to spend 2.5% on defence once the economic circumstances allow. I think that that is the right order, because we cannot have physical security without economic security.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Heappey and Richard Drax

Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

In the context of a question about NATO, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. NATO massively outnumbers Russia as an adversary. The UK commits more than our minimum requirement to NATO. Moreover, allies around NATO are clear that contributing in the traditional domains of land, sea and air is no longer sufficient and that NATO needs capabilities in space and cyber-space, on which, through the integrated review, the UK has invested and is to the fore.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I am going to follow up that question, I am afraid. NATO does outnumber Russia, it is true, but we have to have the weight, muscle and mass, to a certain extent, to react in the event, God forbid, of some form of confrontation with Russia. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to reverse the very bad decision to reduce the Army by 10,000.

[James Heappey]

The Secretary of State has been clear throughout the integrated review process that we are a threat-led Department. As things stand, and as I have said at the Dispatch Box a number of times—I know that my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary has said likewise—a lot of what is in the IR is proving to be vindicated by the realities of the conflict in Ukraine. As we move towards Madrid, and NATO is increasingly clear about what it wants as an alliance as capabilities across all five domains, the UK continues to lead thinking, rather than being behind it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between James Heappey and Richard Drax

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

Make no mistake: the NATO membership of our great friends and allies in the Baltic represents one of the great strengthening moments of the alliance generally. Nobody is prouder to fly the NATO flag than Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, and we stand four-square behind them and behind what it would mean if President Putin were to try to compromise the territorial integrity of those countries in any way. As for the hon. Gentleman’s wider question about resourcing defence across the alliance adequately, I strongly agree; we are one of only a few countries that has been routinely spending the 2% of GDP target. It is fantastic that this moment of challenge within the euro-Atlantic has meant that other countries have now increased their spending to meet that target, too. If there are arguments for more money for defence, no Defence Minister is ever going to object, but we should reflect that the UK has been spending 2% for a while and was given a very significant uplift from the Treasury only 12 months ago.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I commend the United Kingdom for all it is doing to help our NATO allies, but I make this point to the Minister, from one soldier to another. He said earlier that, if circumstances change, the policy changes. I do not excuse myself for again asking the Government to rethink the cut to the Army. He was referring to out of area-type operations, and we are now looking potentially, God forbid, at a conventional war, where mass will be important. We no longer have that mass and it must be retained.

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend and I will debate keenly the future of the land battle, but I am not sure that what we have seen on our TV screens over the past few weeks has been a justification for large amounts of massed armour. I think it is entirely a vindication of a change in the way in which the land battle is prosecuted. If forces are massed, they are vulnerable to missile technologies, which are absolutely in the ascendancy. I think that Future Soldier and the integrated review, which gave birth to that, are exactly the right way to develop the Army to meet the requirements of the land battle as it is now and not perhaps how we thought it was 20 years ago.

Migrant Crossings: Role of the Military

Debate between James Heappey and Richard Drax

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his questions. I do not share his view of the Home Secretary; we have worked closely with her on a number of issues, including Op Pitting over the summer, where she made a number of courageous decisions about how to accelerate border flow at the Baron Hotel, and indeed throughout the past year when the MOD has been trying to support the Border Force. The fact is that this is not a MACA request; it is something quite different. It is asking the Navy to take primacy, from a command-and-control perspective, to bring to bear all the Government’s maritime assets that set sail, across all agencies, in order to try to cohere a more robust response at sea. It is an evolution of what we have been doing rather than a replacement of something that had previously existed.

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there may be a requirement for more naval assets—warships—to be in the channel, but they sit too high off the water to be a credible platform from which to cross-deck people from a dinghy, so the presence of naval assets is probably from a command-and-control perspective rather than from an interdiction or interception perspective. There are better platforms within the Government’s inventory, and things that we can lease from the open market, that will be much more effective for mid-channel cross-decking under RN command and control.

Neither the Royal Navy nor the Royal Marines will be engaged in pushback, but that tactic has been developed by Border Force, and if it is applicable it will be used. The Royal Navy will not use sonic weapons. The Royal Navy or the wider military may be involved in transportation of people when they reach the shore as they enter the processing system. There may be a use for military accommodation. As I said, this is a UQ responding to a partial revelation of the plan, and I make no apology for the wider plan being still in development.

Rear Admiral Utley continues to report to the fleet commander, who reports to the First Sea Lord, who reports to the Secretary of State. Costs will lie where they fall, other than for novel capabilities, in which case there will be a chat with the Treasury. The MOD and the Navy enjoy excellent relations with the French MOD and the French Navy. We are confident in our ability to manage the cross-channel relationships.

I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if I promised him an update on MACAs; I forgot that I had done so and I will make sure that that is rectified.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s statement. I do not see any problem with the Royal Navy getting involved with this issue. For weeks—for years—those on the Opposition Benches have been whingeing and whining that we are not doing enough. It is excellent that the military are taking control and that we are co-ordinating all the assets that we have. It makes perfect sense. When a ship intervenes somewhere in the middle of the channel, will it have the power to take the people back to France, where legally they should be, or do we have to take them into our country and then face all the problems of removing them if indeed they should not be here?

[James Heappey]

No. There is no power to enter another country’s sovereign waters to return people. This evolution in the capability of command and control means that there is a more robust response at sea so that nobody lands on their own terms and they enter a process in the United Kingdom that may take them to return or to some other outcome. The evidence in Australia and elsewhere is that that very quickly has a deterrent effect. I am answering questions on merely a part of the plan, and the House can sense my discomfort at being unable to illuminate it fully.

Afghanistan

Debate between James Heappey and Richard Drax

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

The decision to draw down our military presence within Afghanistan has been announced, and I know that the hon. and gallant Member will appreciate that we will need over the next couple of months to work through the intricacies of what capabilities may endure in Afghanistan. However, it is clear that the United Kingdom will not tolerate an ungoverned space in Afghanistan from which international terrorism can find a base and from which attacks on the UK homeland or those of our allies can be mounted. A CT effort within the wider region will be required to counter that, and of course the alliance reserves the right to go back in if the security situation deteriorates to such an extent that our national security is threatened.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con) [V]]

As we have heard, 457 brave men and women of our armed forces have paid with their lives to protect us here at home, and countless others have been wounded. I sincerely hope that their sacrifice has not been in vain. I seek my hon. and gallant Friend’s assurance that this withdrawal will not see a reluctance on our part to combat terrorism in the future, for, as Edmund Burke said so succinctly, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I should be clear that, as I hope the integrated review made clear, the UK has an ambition to be a force for good in the world and that where terrorism threatens the UK’s interests or those of our allies, we will be present, building the capacity of partner forces and helping to remove that instability and insecurity around the world. What we have learnt over the past 20 years is that there are ways of doing that, and the vision we have set out in the integrated review is for a far more intelligent way of doing that: developing capacity, tackling insecurity and being a force for good around the world.

Immunity for Soldiers

Debate between James Heappey and Richard Drax

Monday 20th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[James Heappey]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is no equivalence whatever. Whether the other side can now be investigated again or not, it is simply unreasonable, wrong, immoral and a breakdown of our covenant with our armed forces that we allow the investigation of those who have served to continue.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) gave an amazing speech, in which he reflected that there was a time when his blokes thought that he had thrown them under the bus because they were required to go to court. It was clear from his speech the pain that he felt having to look his soldiers in the eye and break that news to them. I suspect that if those soldiers were watching you, Colonel, this afternoon they would have been proud to see someone take the responsibilities of command so seriously years after their watch is done. I found that very powerful.

All of us who have had the great privilege of carrying a commission in Her Majesty’s armed forces, and to have had command of soldiers, sailors and airmen, will relate strongly to the pain that my hon. and gallant Friend so clearly felt. Even now, in another career many years later, we feel we are letting our riflemen, guardsmen and private soldiers down. That is what motivates us all to be here.

The first time I was involved in any such process was in Kabul in 2005, about a year after I had been commissioned. We had been involved in the use of lethal force following a double vehicle-borne suicide bombing. Throughout the afternoon and evening that followed, and overnight as we stood on the perimeter, we went back through everything we did and thought tactically whether we did the right thing. When we got in the next morning, having been relieved, and the first thing we got was a date with the Royal Military Police’s special investigations branch, I was pretty close to throwing punches. But I understand that is a necessary part of applying lethal force on the battlefield. We are trained to live and operate by a higher standard, and we should have nothing to fear when the investigation starts immediately on the back of the application of force like that.

Two years later in Basra, and two years after that in Sangin, that process was commonplace—in Sangin, as a battalion adjutant in the most contested Herrick tour and battle space, I was responsible for an awful lot of initial investigation processes. The immediate debrief could not be accurate, because adrenalin was still coursing through the veins of the riflemen who had been involved. They were emotional because, very often, their friends had lost their legs or had been killed in the very same mission. There was confusion about what had happened because the fog of war was all around them. As they relayed their individual testimonies about what had happened that afternoon, night or morning, often that did not match up with the testimony of the rifleman who had stood immediately next to them, fighting the same contact.

In the process of that investigation, the company second-in-command drafts a report and comes up to the adjutant, who has a look at it; he then goes to the brigade and the legal adviser looks at it, and the special investigations branch has a look at it. Meanwhile, that rifleman would have been deployed on three, four, five, six or seven more patrols in the following seven days, in which there would have been more kinetic activity in which they would have applied lethal force, and on the back of which there would have been more reports by the company’s second-in-command, coming up to the adjutant and so on and so forth. Very quickly, all the details of those missions start to mesh into one—so much so that we had riflemen go to the coroner’s hearings six or nine months or a year after a tour and not recognise the contemporary report of what happened that night when they applied lethal force.

I make that point because days or a year after, those servicemen cannot remember exactly what happened—it is a natural part of how we deal with our mental health to seek to delete and overwrite. How on earth can we turn round to them decades later and replay to them accurate reports made at the time as part of the evidence against, and ask them to account for themselves to try to establish their innocence once again? Some of us have had that moment when a threat is perceived—in a split second we have to decide whether to apply lethal force because our life or the life of another is in danger.

[Richard Drax]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. I wonder whether the judge would have access to such reports by the IRA terrorists.

[James Heappey]

My hon. and gallant Friend is absolutely right: the IRA did not keep such records, which is a great unfairness. Those of us who have had to apply lethal force have taken the decision in a split second, hoping that all our training, instincts and everything we have learned since first going into the Army, Navy or Air Force will mean that we take the right decision. We know there is a danger that we might get it wrong and we need to know that, provided we are in the rules of engagement and can say squarely that we perceive the threat to be there, our Government will stand behind our actions.

The written ministerial statement that may come tomorrow is great news for those of us who served on Operation Herrick and Operation Telic. My tours of Afghanistan in 2005 happened more than 10 years ago; my tour to Basra in 2007 was 10 years ago; and at the end of October, my final operational tour to Iraq and Afghanistan will be more than 10 years ago. That statement should be, and will be, huge comfort to tens of thousands of veterans who served in those theatres.

As somebody who served in Northern Ireland, an MP with many constituents who served in Northern Ireland and a former rifleman with many ex-riflemen friends who served in Northern Ireland, I’m all right, Jack. We must remember that it is not okay—in fact, it makes it worse—to have one statute of limitations that applies to the conflicts that are most on people’s conscience, while ignoring those who fought in Northern Ireland in just as trying circumstances, as we have heard so many times this afternoon. They are left behind.

The legal premise on which my former comrades served in Northern Ireland is not their fault. The failings of any investigation that happened at the time is not their fault. Conversely, the quality of the investigations at the time, which allows vexatious politicians and lawyers to pore over the detail and challenge it decades later, is not their fault. The political situation in Northern Ireland is not their fault. The fact that they pulled the trigger in Northern Ireland rather than in the Falklands, the Balkans, Iraq or Afghanistan is not their fault. The fact that the Government have not yet done anything about this is also not their fault.

This situation cannot drag on any further. A universal statute of limitations across all theatres is required now. This is not an amnesty. Our armed forces are not above the law—we ask of them higher standards than we do of those in civilian life. When they fall short, we punish them in a way that would be draconian in any civilian employment setting. If we understand some of what they do, as many of us here do, we understand why they deserve protection. We ask that they accept unlimited liability in defence of our nation. We must accept the political liability that comes with saying, “Come what may, we’ve got your back.”

Sgt Alexander Blackman (Marine A)

Debate between James Heappey and Richard Drax

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

rose—

[Richard Drax]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[James Heappey]

Rather than mention this in my remarks later on, it is perhaps relevant to do so now. I was the adjutant of 2 Rifles in Sangin during Operation Herrick X in 2009, and there was a well-established mechanism of TRiM—trauma instant management—which is the peer-to-peer post-traumatic stress management of people after each traumatic experience. Those records should exist within Sergeant Blackman’s unit. If that process had been done properly, it should have been identified well before he reached his breaking point that he was very much at risk. Those records should exist. If they have not come to light, it is a gross injustice.

[Richard Drax]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I cannot expand on that too much now, but we are aware that Colonel Oliver Lee, Royal Marines, had written a report identifying seven criteria that commanding officers should look out for. I also believe that, as far as Colonel Lee was concerned, Sergeant Blackman ticked every box.

From reading what we have of the executive summary of the Telemeter report—what we have got of it—there is strong reason to believe that the full report is critical of the overall command structure, including the lack of supervision over Sergeant Blackman and his men, which would certainly support Sergeant Blackman’s claims. A sergeant in the Royal Marines is probably—I will get myself into trouble here—superior to, shall we say, a line regiment sergeant, in the sense that they are trained to be far more independent. That was one explanation given to me as to why, in this instance, Sergeant Blackman was left out there for as long as he was—because he was a sergeant and highly respected, and so on.

However, what happened in this instance struck me, too, as extremely odd—my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) hinted at this earlier on, and I agree with him. We are both former soldiers, and it was our duty as officers to visit our men and make quite certain that they were safe and well and doing the job that they should be doing, because that was our task. If we did not do that, things began to unravel. Maybe that was one of the reasons why things unravelled in this particular instance.

Going back to the report—50 pages of which, as I have said, still remain unseen—it is no surprise that the Daily Mail and Frederick Forsyth thunder about a cover-up and attempts to make Sergeant Blackman a scapegoat for a much wider failure of high command. Would the full report have given Sergeant Blackman a better chance in court had it been written and published openly shortly after the events, rather than long after his conviction? Vice-Admiral Jones has reportedly asked both serving and former officers not to comment if the press start asking questions.

Also of great concern is the resignation of Colonel Lee. As I understand it, he was a high-flier who resigned his commission in disgust over how Sergeant Blackman was treated and the refusal to call him in evidence at the court martial. Colonel Lee became Sergeant Blackman’s commanding officer just six days before the incident, although they never met.