Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

No, I do not. If the hon. Lady wants to know one of the reasons that we have taken a slightly different position, it is Operation Spring Shield, which relates to the Turkish incursion into north-west Syria. As she is a member of the ISC, perhaps she should look at the impact of that type of change in tactics and use of technology on a conventional armoured force. It became blatantly clear that unless we modernised and updated our land forces in a proper way, they would be deeply vulnerable to those types of attacks. That is the responsibility I have to protect the men and women operating that equipment so that I can deploy them, and I will not take it lightly. If I have to have a few less people to make sure they are better protected, better equipped and better deployable, but also more lethal, that is a decision I would take, and I am sure that most Members in this House would.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con) [V]]

There is much to welcome in this statement. My only concern relates to some of the cuts in our conventional forces, because quantity still has a quality all of its own. For example, no matter how potent a naval vessel might be, it cannot be in two places at once. May I turn my right hon. Friend’s attention to the importance of soft power in helping to avoid conflict in the first place? I know that this is something he agrees with. What plans are there in the integrated review and the Command Paper to increase resource investment in defence diplomacy as a means of increasing our soft power capabilities?

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend and I completely agree on this matter. We are going to invest in and increase the number of defence attachés around the world. We are going to invest in better comms for them, and we have already started the process of improving their curriculum, so that they are better trained and more knowledgeable. I have also instructed the director of defence people to make a separate career stream for those people, so that they can start at junior level and follow it all the way through to become a professional in a certain part of the world, speaking the language, understanding the importance of inter-regional actions and therefore really adding value and being able to complement the UK’s diplomatic effort and potentially other efforts around the world to provide stability. In that way, we can hopefully get in early and not end up in a place where we have to go and fight a conflict when things have failed.