Defence Expenditure

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I commend the Chair of the Defence Committee on the leadership he has shown in bringing the Committee together, as is obvious from our work. While there may have been a wee bit of spat today, the fact is we all work together because we all share the same goals. It is good to be able to tell people outside of the Chamber that we were able to work together on behalf of our service personnel. It is always wonderful to be able to do that.

As a member of the Defence Committee, this is an issue I feel strongly about, and other hon. Members have strongly expressed themselves as well. The evidence that came before the Committee was incredibly persuasive, and I believe the Government have issued their conclusive response since April 2016. The crux of the matter is clear. I have a direct quote from the press release for the report, which I agree with. It says that

“the Government has achieved its 2% commitment to defence spending in the last year only through what appears to be creative (albeit permissible) accounting.”

That is the fact of the case. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), who spoke very clearly, outlined that. We are all saying together that there has been creative accounting and that, while the figures may show that the percentage has been met, it is not where we wanted it to be. That is the clear issue and what we are about.

I am a straight man. If I can do something for someone, I will tell them and then do it. If I cannot do something, I will tell them that it cannot be done, and together we can work to find an alternative plan. We do that in the House, in the advice centre back home, in the constituency office and in life in general. I understand that Government bodies cannot always achieve miracles and that people cannot do everything I would like them to do, but this is life. By the same token, if someone says they can and will do something, I expect it to be done. That is the fact of it, and that is what the debate is about.

When the Government made the pledge, I was among the first to stand up and congratulate them on taking this step to ensure that our armed forces were at full strength in all aspects. Why, because of creative accounting, has the pledge not been met in real terms? Why have I seen so much evidence that the 2% pledge has not been fulfilled? Today, along with other members of the Committee, I am holding the Minister and the Government to account on the reasoning behind the failure simply to do what they committed themselves to do with the statements they made a long time ago.

The Government’s commitment to not fall below the NATO-recommended minimum defence spending of 2% of GDP for the rest of the current Parliament was not simply a message to our armed forces that they will not be sent out without adequate equipment, training and intelligence. It also sent an important message to our partners and potential adversaries that we are a force to be reckoned with and that we will continue to improve and enhance our defence with an appropriate budget. As other hon. Members have said, we have to respond adequately and strongly to threats, and send a message that defence and our ability to take up arms if necessary is a Government priority. That message has been diluted and clouded by rhetoric, and has not amounted to much in reality.

It is unclear what accounts have been included in the definitive defence budget, both now and in the past. The Ministry of Defence has been unable to provide a robust dataset that identifies which years the costs of operations or the purchase of urgent operational requirements were included in the calculations it submits to NATO. Such inclusions are allowed by NATO, but the lack of clarity confuses anyone’s ability to make year-on-year comparisons of the defence budgets. The MOD must be secretive—that is the very nature of it—but there is no need for shading in that respect, unless it is because the Government hope to get away with not doing what they said they would do. If that is not the case, it could easily be cleared up and rectified with a clear, simple and transparent spreadsheet. That has not been done. I am sure the Minister will respond to that when the time comes.

In accounts provided by the MOD for 2010 and 2015, the new inclusions of the 2015 accounting strategy are difficult to identify. The new inclusions should be outlined and shown from which Department each was previously funded, such as war pensions, intelligence gathering and all of the other things that may be found in the budget for the first time that have suddenly been introduced as part of the 2%. Hon. Members will understand why the Defence Committee is concerned; others who are not on the Committee have expressed concerns as well. My mother often talked of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”. That is what appears to have happened. We have enlarged one defence budget by doing away with others. In the end, Peter and Paul have the same combined amount as they did before. It really is hard to understand how it all works.

As I said in March 2015, my concern is not and never has been about the pennies. My concern is about provision and whether we have in place what we need to actually do the job we want. That was mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), who spoke before me. Is there enough? I do not believe there is enough spending, and the report backs up the fact that that has not changed. My first concern is not having the adequate manpower or provision to step in and offer adequate aid to buttress against further pressures in the areas in which we are involved, which is in the wider context of heightened security tensions across Europe and the middle east and across the Atlantic.

I and other members of the Defence Committee have expressed concerns before about the numbers of reservists and how we get those numbers up. How do we deliver that? How do we retain our regulars? How do we ensure that our service personnel are adequately trained and equipped, and that we have the frigates and ships to fulfil the Royal Navy’s roles? Sometimes Members who are not here or not on the Defence Committee may not know what those roles are. Do we have an RAF that can carry out its responsibilities, from as far away as the Falklands to the piracy in the horn of Africa? Can we be effective in the middle east? We need to be, and we need to have the money in place to do that.

We face threats of both an internal and existential nature, which we need to be prepared to meet. Those threats stretch the capacity of our defence capabilities, first, to maintain the standard of assistance in areas in which we are involved and, secondly, to meet the prospect of further demands. That is what we have to do: meet those further demands.

Those concerns have been shown to be truth over the past 18 months, as we have become involved in more and not fewer situations that require, if not a presence, then intelligence and preparation. We cannot stretch ourselves to such a limit that we are no longer able to protect our citizens, or commit to and deliver our responsibilities, wherever in the world they may be.

As I stood then for at least a 2% of GDP spend, I stand today. We will not be pacified with pie charts and graphs, as the Chair of the Defence Committee presented it to us at an earlier stage, or columns of this or that. We need an honest and open account, and that is not what we have received.

I am conscious that other Members wish to speak, so I will conclude. I say to the Government: do the right thing. Be a Government who stand by their word. Do not seek to pull the wool over the eyes of the Defence Committee or anybody else outside it, when our national security and the lives of men and women are at stake. Our men and women whom we are very proud to see serving and honouring the pledge they have made to defend all these shores and all our interests deserve no less, and their service demands that we cease the disservice that has been done. The Government should simply do what they said they would do by delivering on the 2% and ensuring it is a real 2%. At this time, I do not believe it is.