Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

Yes, I can assure the hon. Gentleman, whom I am delighted to see in his place, that we will have enough frigates to protect the carriers. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will be making the frigate replacement programme very clear in just a few minutes’ time.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

T2. Will the Minister advise the House on how central innovation is to the work of the MOD? Will he take this opportunity to spell out the role he sees the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down playing in the future strategy of defence in the UK?

[The Minister for Defence Procurement (Mr Philip Dunne)]

We fully recognise the importance of innovation, and DSTL does vital work with industry and academia in leading science and technology initiatives to provide capability advantages for our armed forces. We expect it to continue to do so, including through the support it gives the university technical college and the proposed Porton Down science park in my hon. Friend’s constituency.

Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

John Glen Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend has the capacity for perspicacity and anticipates a point I shall make shortly. I agree with him entirely. My Bill seeks to follow, almost slavishly, the principle set by the 2015 Act. I did that intentionally, to encourage the Government to give this Bill, promoted by a Conservative, the same strength of support they gave to a Liberal Democrat Bill.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

One of the issues that concerns me is the inherent flexibility in the definition of what NATO says is acceptable as constituting part of the 2%. If for the first time this year war pensions, pensions of retired civilian MOD personnel and contributions to UN peacekeeping missions are deemed acceptable, is there not a risk that there will be flexibility in what is included in the 2% and that underlying expenditure on defence capabilities will be unclear?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I want to address that issue. The Bill involves a number of technicalities, and that is one of them.

I have always accepted that overseas aid has a role to play, but I have consistently opposed the extraordinary increase that the Department for International Development has enjoyed from Government ring-fencing since 2010—up from £8.5 billion in 2010 to £13 billion in 2014—to meet the figure of 0.7% of gross national income.

It may benefit you, Mr Speaker, and the House if I explain the difference between GDP and GNI. I am advised that GDP is the market value of all services and goods within the borders of a nation, the measure of a country’s overall economic output, and GNI is the total value produced within a country, comprising GDP plus the income obtained from overseas through businesses and so on that have foreign operations. GNI is therefore a more generous fiscal measurement, which naturally inflates the amount of overseas aid required to meet the 0.7% figure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart]

In which case I take back the word “fallacious”; I trust everything that my hon. Friend says.

It was our Prime Minister who convinced fellow NATO members to commit to a target of 2% of GNP at last year’s NATO summit. He was absolutely right. We have now committed ourselves to keeping to that figure, at least for the immediate future. Personally, particularly in the current very dangerous international climate, I would prefer us to spend far more than that on defence. Everyone in this House knows our first and primary duty as Members of Parliament: the defence of our country.

[John Glen]

I want to focus on the principle of setting targets. It seems to me that if we pass this Bill, we have to consider where that stops. The Government have also made commitments on the NHS and education budgets. Would my hon. Friend be inclined to support minimum percentages of expenditure in other Departments? This seems a dangerous road to go down. We should be free to make the case that he has just made: to spend whatever is necessary to meet the challenges that we face in the world.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my very hon. Friend for that point. My view is that there should be no ring-fencing whatever: Governments should govern and decide what is right. What is right for defence is probably more than we are paying at the moment. The fact is that we have ring-fenced other Departments and international aid, but we have not ring-fenced the first duty of government. That is why the 2% minimum target is so important.

That is a good way to end, actually. I will shut up and sit down.

Britain and International Security

John Glen Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I wish to focus my remarks on three areas: the changing nature of the threat; the increased need for broader and deeper collaboration with our allies, with reference to NATO; and the critical significance of the need to win the battle of ideas.

Military strength, though vital to our nation, must be complemented by a more sophisticated understanding of extremist perspectives and the dynamics of how people are recruited to such evil causes. Let me start by examining the very different threats that Britain now faces. The stark differences between the world today and that of the cold war are abundantly clear. Economic and military power are now widely diffused across non-state actors, and an increasingly unpredictable Russia and an inscrutable China, which has evolved and will evolve further into a major player in international security matters, make the world we face very different.

In very recent times, the threat of Islamic extremism, splintering into al-Qaeda offshoots in west and north Africa and the even more extreme Boko Haram, as we have just heard, has made the geographical scope of security risks even broader, thereby accounting for our armed forces being deployed on 21 different operations in 19 countries, double the number of operations just five years ago. Then we have the separate but linked group of al-Shabaab in Somalia. We must recognise that the wide range of extremist groups have different emphases, even though they have a common uncompromising resolve to undermine and attack western values, interests and citizens.

The Arab spring certainly had the consequence of generating greater uncertainty. Even though progress towards democracy appeared to have been secured in Tunisia, last weekend we tragically saw just how easy it is for extremists to penetrate Britain’s security interests—that is, the wellbeing of all our citizens—throughout the globe. In Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Mauritania, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Libya and Kuwait, grave but wide-ranging risks face those who live there as well as those who travel and do business there. This fragmented, complex and uncertain security environment, involving security events, risks and attacks that are much more unpredictable, means that Britain’s assets must be deployed with increased frequency and with more sophisticated skills and roles.

That leads me to my second point. In this uncertain and profoundly more complex international security environment, Britain will need to collaborate more effectively with our NATO allies. The Gracious Speech made clear the Government’s commitment to remain at the forefront of NATO. That will involve intermeshing our assets and capabilities with those of our allies more and more, but it is inconceivable to me that NATO can continue to exist as it does with such wide variance in the interpretation of the 2% of GNI that is to be spent on defence.

In the expanded theatres in which we operate, such as our work with the Kurdish Regional Government, our help for the unprecedented humanitarian response in Syria and our work in Iraq, we must see our allies in NATO spending more. In the UK, the challenge requires three options for defence spending. We must either meet the 2% of GNI not just in the current year but in the comprehensive spending review period for 2016-17 and beyond, or concede that the principle is not sustainable and assess the impact that will have on our moral leadership in NATO and how that differs from where we were at the summit in Wales last year. Alternatively, we can do what I fear we are moving to, and have a fudge using some more DFID money, deftly appropriated for joint humanitarian work. Although the arguments about the £163 billion—1% above RPI—in the equipment budget and the retention of the size and shape of the armed forces will be deployed, the options place a question mark over the integrity of the 0.7% commitment on DFID expenditure and do not fully reflect the necessity to defend and maintain defence budgets at current levels in the face of increasingly diverse and fragmented security interests. Although I readily concede that the budgetary pressures are immense, a greater and impressive list of activities leads me to the view that more effective defence spending, and more of it, is required.

Finally, and more briefly, I wish to reflect on the need to examine more fully the battle for ideas. We will always need military force and I am fully committed, representing the constituency that I do, to the people of our armed forces, who do so much and put so much at risk for our nation. If we examine the geopolitical landscape and fully grasp the fragmentation of extremist ideologies, we will see that we must devote more energy, thought and resources to understanding how to fight against those who hold a very different and extreme eschatology to ours. We must develop a fuller grasp of how the radicalisation process occurs in the UK and in the unstable states we have referred to. This is difficult. It will not be quick or easy.

Today’s debate is timely and critical. We live in a world of changing threats where greater collaboration on a fairer basis will be needed. Britain has led the way in Europe. It must soon decide if it will continue to perform that role in its defence expenditure, but the budget envelope is only one part of it. Without intelligent collaboration, more effective spending focused on reliable outputs, and improved understanding of how all the Government’s assets are used together, we will be at risk of failing in our duty to protect our nation.

Defence Spending

John Glen Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

We have heard three excellent speeches, and I found very little to disagree with in any of them, but perhaps I did disagree with the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) when he spoke of our “misguided” interventions. Surely it was not our interventions but the way in which we carried them through that was misguided. We generally did not carry them through with enough stamina and enough commitment to the action that we needed to take.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard), who serves on the Defence Committee and who has provided us with some extraordinary insights. We have occasionally wished that we could edit some of what he said, or make it a little quicker—we ribbed him about that mercilessly at times—but I think that the whole Committee learned from his long-term, strategic way of looking at things and pulling them together.

It might have been beneficial for the entire defence team to listen to today’s debate, for, as I look around the Chamber, it seems to me that it will turn out to be a debate worth listening to. The same applied to our last debate on defence spending: every speech contributed something. Even if Ministers take in what is said by Members on both sides of the House, they do not make it clear that they are taking any notice of some of the friendly advice that is given to them. A classic example arose during Prime Minister’s Question Time, when I raised the subject of the 2% target. It was the Prime Minister who, at the Wales summit, lectured other countries and told them that they should step up to the plate. I suggested that he might just feel a tiny bit embarrassed, but all that he could come back with was some reference to the Scottish National party. Defence is not a party political issue; it is an issue for which the House has a collective responsibility. It seems that Back-Bench debates are required to bring Members together to discuss an issue that the Government ought to encourage us to talk about, but do so very rarely.

Let me return to the question of why the 2% matters. We all agree that it is an arbitrary figure, but it is part of an international commitment: it is part of article 5. Article 5 contains no mandate for a particular kind of response, but if we continue like this, we shall have no response except sanctions. We shall not be able to respond militarily except via the Americans. It is deeply irresponsible for the mainland European NATO members to keep cutting defence spending and keep telling their publics that, while their aspirations have not changed, everything will be done through much smarter methods and in co-operation, so they will continue to deliver more by investing less.

A few years ago, someone in the Pentagon described European countries as “no-good, crummy allies”. If we continue on our present trajectory, we shall join the ranks of no-good, crummy allies, and I do not want to see that day. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay spoke of national and international interests, to which I would add “national and international responsibilities”. If we wish to be a significant player in the world and to fulfil those international interests, we must possess not only capacity, but reliability and steadiness.

I do not want to repeat the speech that I made last week. My last point concerns political leadership. It is true that defence is not a vote-winner. I would not like to live in a country where people demonstrate in the streets, demanding more weapons and military action. It is in the nature of our people to want peace, but the leaders must show that they are responsive to the needs of the defence of the realm, and are conscious of their international responsibilities.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making some characteristically wise observations, and I think we all agree about the 2%. Surely, however, leadership is not just about calling on all NATO members to match that 2%, but about calling for effective use of that money. Many people feel that if the 2% is not spent wisely, it is not really the end of the story. We need to be sure that it is being spent properly.

[Ms Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is right: it must be spent properly. The 2% commitment sends signals, and gives the services and the supply chain certainly, about what is going to happen. It is no good trying to massage the figures and suddenly include war pensions in order to arrive at the 2% figure, because that would render it absolutely meaningless.

I said that I would be brief. Let me end by saying that the 2% is part of our North Atlantic treaty commitment, because part of our commitment is to a capacity that will enable us to respond to an article 5 threat. It is up to all parties in the House—and, in particular, Front Benchers—to show leadership, so that we can bring our voters with us in relation to our commitment. Without leadership, that simply will not happen.

Defence and Security Review (NATO)

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

That is the second point that I was coming to. The second reason why we have to spend 2% of GDP or more on defence is that we have concrete tasks that we need to perform. There are some real requirements if we are to deal with the new threat. The problem with the threat assessments since the end of the cold war is that they have been done in a vacuum. Now that we can see a threat in the form of Putin, we realise that there are considerable capacities that we need to rebuild. Those capacities cost money, so we need to invest in them.

The third reason is that deterrence is about psychology. Deterrence is about will-power and confidence; it is not just about kit. The 2% is about what Putin thinks of us; it is about whether he thinks that we are serious. Often, we think that the way to deal with a Russian conventional threat is with a conventional response, and that the way to deal with a Russian unconventional threat is with an unconventional response. Of course, the Russians, particularly Gerasimov, the chief of staff, use the phrase “asymmetric warfare”, which means that they understand very well that often one should deal with a conventional threat with an unconventional response and vice versa. One of the best ways of deterring Putin from mucking around either conventionally or unconventionally is to let him see the confidence of that NATO commitment towards 2% of GDP. As he begins to see the exercises, the spending and the increasing confidence of our armed forces, that will act as the deterrent.

That brings me to my last argument for why spending 2% of GDP on defence is central: it will provide a fantastic framework of planning for our armed forces for the next five years. The fundamental problem in defence and foreign affairs is, of course, that the electoral cycles and financial cuts of modern democracies simply do not operate in sync with the realities of the world and its crises.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Is it not also the case that the rigour of the SDSR process needs to do justice to the nature of the threats we face? It should not be an argument about 2% or bust; it should be about correctly assessing the world as it exists today and as it will exist and ensuring that we have the capabilities to meet the threats that will exist over the next 10 years.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

The Government were concerned to look at any export licences that had been granted and undertook an initial review in August. We launched another review earlier this month and when it is available we will respond to the hon. Lady.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

T6. I sincerely welcome the Government’s recent decision to grant pensions to forces widows who remarry. However, there are still 126 divorced spouses, including one of my constituents, who are denied access to their anticipated pensions due to an administrative error by an agency of the Ministry of Defence. In the light of the recent decision, will the Minister reconsider these cases and see what can be done across government to put this right?

[Anna Soubry]

The short answer is yes. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he has done on his constituent’s case. He can be assured that I am aware of the ruling. Consideration is being given by lawyers from both the MOD and the Department for Work and Pensions. I am very happy to continue to work with him and to help his constituent.

Reserve Recruitment

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

I have too much respect for the hon. Gentleman to get too party political about what happened to our defences under the previous Government. If he chooses to cruise the BBC website, he will find that in the past four weeks Vladimir Putin has announced a very large expansion in the Russians’ part-time reserve army.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

One area of apprehension in Salisbury is the package of incentives and support available to small and medium-sized employers. Will the Minister say something about why employers should be content to allow their employees to volunteer to join the reserves, and why that package has improved?

[Mr Brazier]

The first thing we should recognise is that this is part of corporate social responsibility. Any employer who signs up faces the prospect that in extremis his employee might be compulsorily mobilised. What he gets for that is somebody who is motivated and who is trained in a variety of ways not available in civilian life. What he gets also is a loyal employee with good values. The financial side has been improved in various ways, including the £500 a month extra compensation for a small business that loses an employee on operations, over and above the full compensation package.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

3. What discussions he has had with his counterparts in the middle east about the situation in Iraq.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

8. What plans he has to consult partner countries in the middle east about a solution to the current violence in Iraq.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

16. What discussions he has had with his counterparts in the middle east about the situation in Iraq.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hammond]

We have made it clear that we believe there are two steps. The first is a political solution to the situation in Iraq. Iraq must have an inclusive Government in order to rally the Iraqi security forces and to be able to provide an appropriate defence against the ISIS incursion. Our focus at the moment is on encouraging the formation of such an inclusive Government in Baghdad. Once a Government with broad legitimacy in the country is established, we will be open to considering requests for technical advice and support from that Government to reinforce the Iraqi security forces.

[John Glen]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s initial answer. Does he agree with me that it is critical for the UK to remain close to all the regional players, including Jordan and Qatar, so that maximum influence can be brought to bear if any of these individual countries get drawn into Iraq’s internal security challenges in different ways?

[Mr Hammond]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is vital that we remain engaged with the key countries in the region, and we will do so. It is vital, too, that we are acutely mindful of the pressures that the Governments of Jordan and Lebanon are under as a result of what is going on in Syria and Iraq. These are two very important countries, and we will do everything we can to support them in these difficult times.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. An hon. Gentleman should not be talking about kicking people in an unspecified location. It is rather unseemly. I think I heard what he was driving at, if I may put it that way.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

T8. In view of the uncertainty about the future of Public Health England at Porton Down and the imminent submission of the outline business case to the Treasury, will the Minister confirm that the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory is ready and willing to work collaboratively on a Porton-based solution for the future of the PHE facility there?

[Mr Dunne]

My hon. Friend is a valiant champion of all that goes on in and around Porton Down, and he is to be congratulated on the work he did in securing the science park funding last week. With regard to the CL4 facility at Porton Down, which is co-shared with Public Health England, the Ministry of Defence will be working with the Department of Health to ensure that the best solution is found for the country as a whole for the future of CL4 facilities.

Afghanistan

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

It is not directly designed to support the security operation; it is designed to support the good administration of the elections. We have also allocated funds to increasing the participation of female candidates, and providing the training and capacity building that will enable more of them to take part in the election.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Given the unfortunate gap between our hopes and aspirations and the time taken to achieve our goals in Afghanistan, can my right hon. Friend tell us why he is so sure that Afghan forces possess enough resilience to handle the expected intensification of violence at the end of 2014? In what circumstances would the supporting role of British troops intensify after that date to ensure that this country’s sacrifices were not wasted?

[Mr Hammond]

As the House would expect, I make my judgments about military matters—in particular, the resilience and capability or otherwise of any particular forces—on the basis of military advice, and that is the military advice that I am receiving. However, I am not sure that my hon. Friend is necessarily right in seeing nothing but a reinforcement of the insurgency after the end of 2014. On the one hand, ISAF will not be present in the same numbers or in the same role, but on the other hand, there is no doubt in my mind that the presence of foreign forces has been one of the great recruiting sergeants of the insurgency, and that the removal of foreign forces changes the dynamics. There are definitely Afghans who would have signed up to the insurgency to fight foreign soldiers but do not wish to join up and kill their Afghan brothers in the ANSF.

Armed Forces Restructuring

John Glen Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I know that Opposition Members do not like it being said that we inherited a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget. We have dealt with that and we have put in place a balanced equipment plan that is fully funded with a contingency of £4.5 billion in it. More importantly, we have put in place mechanisms to ensure that projects do not get signed off willy-nilly by politicians when the resources are not in place to pay for them. That ensures that we have a coherent defence budget and that we never again find ourselves in the position of the former Labour Defence Secretary Lord Hutton who, for the want of £300 million over two years, was forced to delay the aircraft carrier project and drive £1.6 billion of additional costs into that programme. We will not get ourselves into that position.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Some of my constituents have been alarmed by recent reports of unfilled vacancies in key roles such as intelligence officers, radiologists and electronic warfare system operators. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the announcement today will take account of the need to maintain all capabilities and avoid expensive short-term replacements from outside the armed services?

[Mr Hammond]

As I said in an earlier reply, we will not be making any redundancies in those pinch-point fields. We face, across the armed forces, a number of areas in which we directly compete with very highly paid civilian occupations. I am talking about engineering of all types—nuclear, aircraft and airworthiness speciality skills. In those areas, it is a constant challenge to recruit and retain staff, but those are challenges that the single services manage extraordinarily effectively in the circumstances.