Oral Answers to Questions
John Cooper Excerpts(4 days, 22 hours ago)
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John Healey
The Prime Minister was right then and he is right now. I am working with the Northern Ireland Secretary to repeal and replace the legacy Act. We will honour the Prime Minister’s undertaking to this House and do right by the duty that this nation holds to those veterans who served for more than 38 years during the troubles in Northern Ireland.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
The Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry (Maria Eagle)
The strategic defence review recommended that the Hawk T1 and T2 be replaced with a cost-effective advanced jet trainer. The future platform of the Royal Air Force aerobatic team is being considered at the same time, and a Royal Air Force programme team is being established to deliver that capability.
John Cooper
The TSR-2 aircraft was a world beater. Unfortunately, the only thing that it could not beat in a dog fight was a Labour Government, who knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Will the Minister assure me that we have learned the lessons of TSR-2, and that we will look at the replacement for the Hawk in the light of pressing a British-designed and manufactured aircraft that can sell Britain abroad?
Maria Eagle
The Conservative party set 2030 as the Hawk T1’s out-of-service date in its 2015 strategic defence and security review, and it then did precisely nothing to achieve a replacement in the nine years that followed, so I am disinclined to take lessons from the hon. Gentleman’s party on how to replace the Hawk. I assure him that the competition will welcome any bids from UK-based suppliers.
National Armaments Director
John Cooper Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I have been banging on like a howitzer—well, maybe like a small-bore cannon—about the need to mobilise British industry as we ramp up for possible conflict in an increasingly hostile world. I welcome the news that the new national armaments director is being resourced to oversee the alliance between our military brains and brawn and the sinews of the British defence industry.
Civilians talk tactics, but veterans talk logistics, for old warriors know that a modern army marches not so much on its stomach, as in the days of Wellington and Napoleon, as on a very long supply chain, anchored mainly in small and medium-sized enterprises. That extends—to use the military’s favourite phrase—to all domains.
We have had recent sharp lessons on the reality of modern warfare, from the muddy hell of trenches in occupied Ukraine to the arid highlands of Iran. We have seen high-tech systems—drones, cyber, space and stealth—undergo a baptism of fire. We have also seen weapons that would have been familiar to my infantryman grandfather on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915 plying their old trade to deadly effect; artillery remains the queen of the battlefield. While our sailors, soldiers and aircrew are the tip of the spear, the essential shaft is our factories and shipyards, and every corner of the country can play its full part. I say “every part”, but there is bad news from Scotland under the yoke of the SNP, where the nationalists and their Green party fellow travellers have engendered a hostile environment for defence firms. We have seen young apprentices denied entrance to the Holyrood Parliament by an elected representative tipped to lead the Greens; and, in recent days, we have seen former First Minister Humza Yousaf—still an MSP—blundering around on the world stage, shroud-waving about it being a war crime to allow US military aircraft to refuel at Prestwick airport, and bemoaning the proscription of the saboteurs of Palestine Action.
There is a presumption, as we heard from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), that the Scottish Government will not channel funding towards ordnance—a battlefield prerequisite. That has led this Government to step in and say that they will help to fund a new Rolls-Royce centre of welding excellence on the Clyde, which will be key to submarine and warship building.
The stakes could not be higher. Scotland is already a defence powerhouse. Umbrella body ADS estimates that 16,250 people in Scotland work in the sector, producing Royal Navy warships, cutting-edge radars, optronic masts—do not dare call them mere periscopes—for submarines and smart missiles such as Storm Shadow. Even my rural constituency of Dumfries and Galloway produces the helmets vital to the sensor suite on F-35 Lightning fighter bombers, of which we are purchasing 12 more nuclear-capable Alpha variants.
Figures from 2023 show that the Ministry of Defence spends £370 per person living in Scotland. It is—or ought to be—Britain’s arsenal, and as such, Scotland should be top of the national armaments director’s in-tray, yet firms wanting to set up the new ordnance factories recommended in the strategic defence review, or seeking to expand in order to fulfil new MOD orders, cannot count on financial support via the Scottish Government. Whose side is Scotland’s First Minister on? Will the Minister tell the House what powers the new armaments director will have to eliminate the Scottish Government’s reckless fifth columnist policies on defence?
Nuclear-certified Aircraft Procurement
John Cooper Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the rare opportunity against the run of play to follow my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) from Strangford. Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary-General, has recently congratulated President Trump on his “decisive action in Iran”, which he says “makes us all safer”. Will the Minister take the opportunity to do what no one in government has so far done and congratulate the Americans on taking out the Iranian nuclear programme? If not, will she explain why we are out of step not only with the Americans, but also now with NATO?
Maria Eagle
I think it has been fairly clear from proceedings in the House that the Government have said that we agree that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, but that, in this instance, we are very keen that diplomacy is the way forward.
UK Military Base Protection
John Cooper Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Luke Pollard
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the concerns of the local community around Brize Norton, and I would be very happy to meet him to discuss the details of what occurred from our point of view and the measures that can be put in place. The initial actions taken by the Defence Secretary have identified a number of immediate steps that we are taking to further secure the base, but I would be happy to speak to the hon. Gentleman about that further.
The hon. Gentleman is right that much of our armed forces estate and our armed forces have been hollowed out and underfunded for far too long, which is precisely the reason that I welcome the increase in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by April 2027. Our armed forces are brilliant, and it is time they had first-class facilities.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
Humza Yousaf, the former First Minister of Scotland, has invited those in this place to check their moral compass over the proscription of Palestine Action, but I think we have heard here today that no one is seriously suggesting that these people are anything other than saboteurs, and that anyone who expresses sympathy for them has their moral compass spinning like a peerie, as we would say in Scotland. Mr Yousaf further suggested that American aircraft using Prestwick airport in Scotland could leave us open to charges of war crimes, and I wonder whether the Minister agrees with me that that is absolute nonsense. Prestwick airport is owned by the Scottish Government—in fact, it is a civilian airport, although it is heavily used by our allies, in particular America and Canada. What can we do to protect those aircraft at that civilian airbase?
Luke Pollard
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that airfield in question. Civil-military co-operation—using civilian infrastructure for military purposes—is a model that we may look to develop further, especially as we look to increase our warfighting readiness in the future, so the lessons about security need to be applied. Luckily, many of our European allies operate civil-military airfields, so there are good models that we can look to on how to do that.
On the accusation that the hon. Gentleman raises on behalf of a Member of the Scottish Parliament, let me say clearly that the UK military operates only in compliance with international humanitarian law. That is absolutely vital. If an order is given that is contrary to international humanitarian law, our armed forces are not required to follow it. It is that high standard that means our armed forces are respected worldwide.
Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy
John Cooper Excerpts(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Sir Iain Duncan Smith
It is powerful that my hon. and gallant Friend is here today to support this debate, given his service in Afghanistan. He will understand more than most the threats that were received by these people and how their lives would have been more difficult. He will also know that many would have lost their lives had this sort of intelligence and support not been available from these brave individuals. I am grateful for his intervention.
Despite the overwhelming evidence presented—there was much of it—the application was rejected on all counts and the individual remains at risk. What we got back in the papers that I looked through, which came first to the Minister and then to me, was this:
“the decision maker was unable to satisfy themselves from the evidence provided or that held by the UK Government that his role with National Directorate of Security…was closely supporting or in partnership with a UK Government Department”.
Is that really the best we can do—some bureaucrat stuck away somewhere who does not care, who is not even in the Ministry of Defence and who has no real understanding of what it is like to put one’s life on the line for other people’s safety? All of that evidence is dismissed in the line
“unable to satisfy themselves from the evidence provided”.
I find that astonishing and appalling. I say that not to attack civil servants—many of them are brilliant and do a lot of work—but this process allows someone to make a decision about the life and death of a brave individual without even thinking about the consequences.
This is not just about a bureaucratic error. As I said, the situation is very human; it is literally life and death. We are making a decision today under this scheme to have this individual die. That is pretty much what they are saying. He is a man in hiding, in fear of his life and the lives of his family. I understand that even his closest relation has been arrested and has probably been tortured to find out where he is. We dismiss it with the words that those processing his application were “unable to satisfy themselves”.
By the very nature of the daily intelligence that this individual was required to share, there is a threat to his life and to his family. He has placed himself between us and the Taliban. Records of these meetings were kept and widely publicised, including in public relations-focused photographs showing the individual at meetings attended by the general. This evidence was recorded in Afghan Government systems and in offices now commandeered by the Taliban, who now know what he was doing. It is still easily searchable on the internet today, yet the decision maker was
“unable to satisfy themselves from the evidence provided”
that he was closely supporting or in partnership with the UK. Really?
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for giving way on that point. Is this not a case of the old adage that rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obeyance of fools? Are we not seeing a punctilious following of rules here, when a man’s life is at risk?
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
Indeed, we are. We are elected—that is what makes us different—to this Chamber to take that on and to change it. We are not bound by a bureaucratic process. We have the power here to change anything, and I simply ask: why not do that, when human lives and those who served us are at risk? We must recognise and remember that we are not bureaucrats—we are politicians, and we must feel the pain of others and understand when we need to change. I was concerned that my own Government did not make that change before and, in a way, I am begging the Government to see it differently and to try to do something about it.
More and more ex-military and ex-security forces people are being targeted in Afghanistan. We know that; it is a fact. Executions are taking place all the time, but because we are not there and it is not on the television every day, we put it to one side. We forget that dead British servicemen were clapped through the towns because people recognised their bravery in being out there to help people and to support those who did not want that tyranny back in their country. We supported those servicemen, and we feel strongly for their bravery; why do we not feel the same for those who helped them and who helped many others to stay alive? Surely they are just as valuable to us as any British soldier who was saved by them. That is the cost, and that is the equation.
I simply say to the Minister that according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s quarterly human rights update, the Taliban detained at least 23 former Government officials and members of the Afghan national security forces during this period. At least five were subjected to torture or other forms of ill treatment. Many of the arrests took place in Panjshir and Kabul, and were reportedly tied to alleged links to the National Resistance Front.
As I said earlier, I do not believe that this individual case is isolated. It exposes deep systematic failures in the ARAP scheme. The excessive bureaucracy and eligibility criteria are remarkable. The system as it stands is clearly ill equipped to deal with exceptional cases—there are many—such as this one. Most importantly, it fails to offer the necessary protection to those who are now at risk because of their loyalty to the UK and the British forces. As I said earlier, I know there are colleagues on both sides of the House who behave bravely and serve their country, including the Minister’s colleague who sits on the Front Bench.
I will finish my comments with this. Surely we must now change the scheme. We must be generous to those whose generosity with their lives has kept so many British lives safe. I know the restrictions of being at the Dispatch Box, and I know that civil servants will have said to the Minister, “Be very careful. You don’t want to step across this one, and you mustn’t make a pledge that we can’t consider. Don’t let that man put your career in danger.” I think putting our careers in danger is nothing compared with the actions of those who put their lives in danger for us.
I simply ask the Minister to pledge that he will do his utmost, that he will speak to the powers that be, and that he will bang on the door of No. 10 and demand that the Prime Minister take on this case and others personally. While we build up our armed forces, and look to have allies and people who will work with us, they will look back at how we treated those who came before and they will ask themselves, “Why do I serve with people who forget you when the deed is done?” I say to the Minister: let us not forget them. They are as brave and as important to us as the soldiers who were directly employed by us, who served us and who made sure that many were saved as a result.
UK Nuclear Deterrent
John Cooper Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Luke Pollard
I am normally reasonably impressed by the hon. Gentleman on defence matters, but let me say politely that we have £5 billion extra in the defence budget this financial year thanks to the decisions by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. By 2027, we will have over £13 billion more in cash terms compared with the situation that his party left. When it comes to increasing defence spending, we are doing it three years earlier. It is worth reminding him that the last time this country spent 2.5% of GDP on defence was under the last Labour Government. It is something that his party never achieved for a single day when it was in power.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
Most military operations require an element of surprise, and the Government certainly achieved that by delivering the news of the return of tactical nuclear weapons through the medium of The Sunday Times. That marmalade-dropping moment aside, what impact will the apparent purchase of F-35 Lightning fighters from America have on the global combat air programme that we are putting together with Italy and Japan—or should I wait for the “You read it here last” strategic defence review?
Luke Pollard
In the spirit of the day, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman waits for the Defence Secretary’s statement that is coming soon. I am very aware that when people go to a gig, they want the main act, not the warm up, so I look forward to him speaking in due course.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Cooper Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Maria Eagle
I agree with my hon. Friend’s analysis of the impact of poor housing. We have regained control of 2,793 of the 3,221 service family accommodation units in Yorkshire and Humber previously owned by Annington, after a landmark deal earlier this year. As well as saving taxpayers rent that can be recycled into improvements, that enables us to plan a once-in-a-generation improvement of service family homes. The detailed plans will be set out in the defence housing strategy later this year.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey)
The Government recognise the important service and sacrifice of those forces veterans who served in Northern Ireland. More were killed during the troubles there than in Afghanistan. I am acutely aware of the anguish caused to those veterans and their families by historical investigations. While the Ministry of Defence continues to provide welfare support and legal support to those affected, I am determined that we will do more.
John Cooper
Operation Banner defeated the IRA militarily and paved the way for the Good Friday agreement, so why are this Labour Government now pushing two-tier justice, to the obvious detriment of our brave Northern Ireland veterans and to the advantage of Gerry Adams and his Sinn Féin fellow travellers? Where is the justice in that?
John Healey
This Government are dealing with the woeful shortcomings of the last Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. As we do so, we will give priority to strengthening the protections that preserve dignity and respect for our veterans who served in Northern Ireland.
UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility
John Cooper Excerpts(2 months ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I am relieved to hear that the strategic defence review is coming in the spring—with a great yellow ball in the sky, I assume that will be fairly soon. In all military operations time is the enemy, and I am concerned about reports that the SDR may only be a broadbrush document—an interim document, as it were—and that the important decisions on specific capabilities and weapons systems may not be taken until autumn. Are we marching on to war? If so, should we not be doing so at the double, rather than at a slow march?
John Healey
The hon. Gentleman has managed to broaden his question from this specific statement on the overnight strikes. The strategic defence review is a strategic defence review. It will be published in the spring. It has been an unprecedented and externally led process, which has allowed to us to take stock of the threats we face and the capabilities we need, and to do so within the unprecedented increase in defence funding that this Government have now committed to over the next 10 years.
Ukraine Update
John Cooper Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
John Cooper
I had better think of something quick. I will return to the question of fishing. It is right that we draw together with our European allies to fight and to bring this war to an end. However, it cannot be right for the French to leverage in fishing negotiations for defence spending. Will the Secretary of State press on the Prime Minister the need to defend our fragile coastal communities and make it clear to Paris that this cannot be helicopters for haddock or mackerel for missiles?
John Healey
That was worth waiting for. My first focus as Defence Secretary is securing a defence and security agreement and seeing that as the passport to more British firms and British jobs as we play our part in some of the Europe-wide procurement programmes and industrial developments that we need to see.
Blair Mayne: Posthumous Victoria Cross
John Cooper Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I congratulate my neighbour the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this important debate—we could almost smell the cordite in his opening remarks.
My first encounter with the Special Air Service was when, just as we were getting to the good bit, the John Wayne film on TV was interrupted, and it was over to Kate Adie as men in bug-eyed respirators ended the Iranian embassy siege on 5 May 1980, amid the thunder of flashbangs and the staccato rattle of small arms fire. As a journalist, I later met John “Mac” McAleese, who really was the man on the balcony, not—I hate to break it to Members—that bloke down the pub mumbling about the colour of the boathouse at Hereford, as Walter Mitty characters do. I also became friends with Colonel Clive Fairweather, second in command of the regiment. Sadly, both men are no longer with us, but in life one thing was obvious: neither was a reckless psychopath. They were hard men—yes, of course, for theirs is a lethal business—but rather more planning and preparation goes into tier 1 special forces than novels and TV would have us believe.
Controversy reigns over television’s brilliant “SAS: Rogue Heroes” and Blair “Paddy” Mayne’s depiction, but it is nothing new. There were all sorts of claims about the book “Bravo Two Zero” when it emerged after the first Gulf war. Was it fact or fantasy? Peter “Billy Rat” Ratcliffe, former regimental sergeant major of 22 SAS, told me, “Life in the regiment is not really about garrotting 200 sentries, you know.” “But you do know how to garrotte a sentry, don’t you?” I asked. In his Salford accent, he told me, “Oh, yeah, but I’d rather shoot you from a mile away—less chance of being compromised.” That was uncompromising, but careful, thoughtful and cunning too.
As such, these men are surely the inheritors of the spirit of Blair Mayne. For certain, he could be a wild man, especially in drink—there is a cottage on the Isle of Arran pockmarked yet by rounds fired from his service revolver after a surfeit of whisky—but it fell to Mayne to protect and indeed nurture the nascent SAS when its founder, Sir David Stirling, was a prisoner of war in Italy and the infamous Colditz. If Mayne were as unhinged as he is portrayed, he would not have been able to apply the quiet discipline needed to forge a bunch of rogues into an effective and elite fighting force. It strikes me that the only recklessness Blair Mayne displayed was for his own safety, never that of his men—his “Blades”, as SAS troopers are known.
Concerning us today is the action at Oldenburg on 9 April 1945, but let me be clear that this is not football-style VAR for gallantry medals; we are not reopening cases by the dozen, just this oddity. We may never know what precisely happened there almost 80 years ago to the day. We do know that Mayne was recommended for the VC, and his audacity was the only thing said to have kept him alive. We may also never learn what made the authorities downgrade that VC. Was it professional jealousy? Special forces face that today: the sobriquet “the Hereford hooligans” is unfairly appended to the SAS in many a mess, and SF officers who ought to be generals somehow do not make the cut.
Mayne’s hand shaped the SAS, and the regiment has in turn guided special forces around the globe. US Major Charles “Blisters” Beckwith raised the Delta Force—he promised it “Will get you a medal, or a body bag. Maybe both”—after time spent with the SAS. Mayne’s legacy is secure, and there is no doubting his courage.
We are not here to critique “SAS: Rogue Heroes”—it is fun and it has a great soundtrack and great acting, although the accents are as sketchy as the history. Instead, we should coolly examine the real Major Mayne and ask why the VC was approved by all who mattered but rescinded in murky circumstances.
I am a student of military history, having undertaken a distance learning MA with the excellent University of Birmingham. One of the first lessons learned was that history is not fixed—it is not preserved in aspic—but shifts and changes as new details and perspectives open up. Look at the so-called château generals—men who in life were highly rated by their troops, only later to be accused of being donkeys leading lions. Aside from the few who think that “Blackadder Goes Forth” is a documentary, that trope is happily being revisited. We should have courage enough today to look again at the Mayne case, too. Eighty years on, we can sense something odd about the lack of a VC—“signal”, rather than “single”, perhaps?
The military is split in two into ratcatchers and regulators, and we need both. We need regulators with their rulebooks and procedures in times of peace, and we need maverick ratcatchers in times of war. Mayne was a fine ratcatcher, and regulators then and now should not stand between him and this country’s premier gallantry medal.