Armed Forces Readiness and Defence Equipment

John Healey Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I started by knocking a glass of water over when I came into the Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I have finished by doing so.

I thank all Members for their contributions today, but I also thank the armed forces, as we all should, for everything that they do to keep us safe. Our UK armed forces are essential not just to the defence of our nation but to the members of our NATO alliance, and also to our UK role in upholding international law. We respect, as the world does, the professionalism with which they do their job.

I welcome the further AUKUS agreements that that are being signed this week between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. This is our most important strategic defence alliance outside NATO. It is so much more than a big submarine building programme. It demands UK national endeavour and UK national leadership, and it has the complete support of the Labour party.

President Putin claimed 88% of all the votes in last week’s Russian poll. It was a total sham of an election, but a serious moment for UK defence. Over the next decade, we will face Putin and an alliance of aggression from autocrats who have contempt for international law, and who squander freely the lives of their own people.

The Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin), opened the debate by saying that we should start where all defence debates should start—with the threats that we face. The threats that we face will only increase, which is why we need a new era for defence, why these reports are so important, and why this debate is so important.

Madam Deputy Speaker, before you took the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker said of this debate that it promised to be one of the best informed on all sides, and he was right. The right hon. Member for Horsham brought his experience not just as a former Minister, but as the Chair of the Defence Committee. I pay tribute to him, because we now agree that it is right to move away from competition by default and to see the defence sector as a “critical strategic asset”, as he called it, which is a reflection of the work that he has done.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) asked the right question: what are we doing to create new industrial capacity in the UK and in collaboration with close allies?

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) said that she has seen the arguments and excuses, yet no efficiencies arrive. That was captured not just in her report, which is the subject of this debate, but in other reports that her Public Accounts Committee has undertaken into defence procurement since 2019, and in nine National Audit Office reports looking at the same problems.

The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) made a very moving speech about his father’s D-day experience. I particularly enjoyed the emotive part of his speech, where he got stuck into the Government and the MOD.

The hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) was quite right to say that we are now in a moment of existential risk, because we are not ready to fight the wars that we may face. It is a theme that picked up by the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who said that we should be looking at not just our operational readiness, which is the subject of the Defence Committee’s report, but our strategic readiness. Part of that is about taking responsibility as a nation to develop greater resilience and, interestingly, greater talent, including in our political parties and in this House.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made a very strong argument for defence plans that are based on reality and on honesty about the UK’s role in the world, and especially the priority that we must give to our role in NATO. He, too, said that we must see defence investment directed first to benefiting the UK’s economy.

The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) has been a Defence Minister too, and he leads the NATO parliamentary delegation from this country. He was right to remind us that for NATO member nations, article 3, on the obligation to defend their own country, is as important and fundamental as article 5, on the obligation to defend each other.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) spoke in some detail about the equipment shortfalls that the Defence Committee’s report lays out, and rightly spelled out the concern that the MOD is covering up the scale of the problems by not providing information to the public or Parliament. That was echoed by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord), who said that operational planning assumptions, which were published up until 2015, are no longer published.

The hon. Member for Rochdale (George Galloway) was right to talk about the concealment of truth about the state of our armed forces, but in fairness to the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford, that is exactly what the Defence Committee—he played a leading part in producing its report—is arguing the Government are not doing. Defending our people and our allies is not “Alice in Wonderland” or Gilbert and Sullivan; it is what people have a right to expect of their Government and Parliament.

Finally, we heard from the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), who speaks for the SNP and has great experience on defence. I followed his three P’s, and I was particularly struck by his discussion of people. There is a requirement to do better in recruiting and retaining members of the armed forces. He argued that it is not just about numbers and that our forces must better reflect the diversity of the people they serve to protect.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Member for making those points, but I would push him on the issue of an armed forces representative body. Is it something that he and his party remain committed to?

[John Healey]

No, it is not. We have a much better solution, which is to legislate for an independent armed forces commissioner, like there is in Germany. They will be a voice for armed forces personnel and the families who support them, and will report to Parliament, not Ministers. In that way, we can reinforce the accountability of our military to this House and the public, as well as making it more responsive to those who serve. I will come to some points on that, if I may.

I pay tribute to all contributors to this debate, particularly those who are members of the two Committees on whose reports it is based. As they know, there are deep and long-running problems across defence, but I want to marshal my remarks into three main areas of findings in both reports: first, the hollowing out and underfunding of our armed forces; secondly, defence mismanagement and waste; and thirdly, the increasing lack of openness that we have seen recently from the Ministry of Defence.

On hollowing out and underfunding, my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields reminded us that it was the last Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), who told this House last January that the armed forces have been “hollowed out and underfunded” over the last 14 years. These reports reinforce that sobering assessment of our UK military power and readiness.

The Defence Committee found that there are

“capability shortfalls and stockpile shortages”

across the forces, that resilience has been undermined by reductions, and that there is a

“crisis in the recruitment and retention of both Regulars and Reserves”.

Our armed forces are

“losing personnel faster than they can recruit them.”

The hollowing out and underfunding is getting worse, not better.

[The Minister for Defence Procurement (James Cartlidge)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

The Minister can have his say later.

The Defence Committee report says that capability gaps are growing, reliance on allies is increasing, and we now have the largest ever deficit in the MOD’s equipment plan, at £16.9 billion. The PAC concluded that there is an “unmistakable deterioration” in the MOD’s financial position.

Like the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford, I have brought along the Red Book. I have studied tables 2.1 and 2.2. The Treasury and the House of Commons Library confirm a reduction in defence budgets, which will be cut by £2.5 billion in cash terms for the next financial year. These are the budgeted baseline figures on which defence can plan, procure, deploy and develop capabilities—not the one-off add-ons for specific purposes, such as nuclear or Ukraine, which are the figures that Ministers too often use to inflate the figures on total spending and disguise the real budgets. This is where the country is left after 14 years of Conservative failure on defence, and the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford said that this is wholly unworthy of a Conservative Government. I say it is wholly unworthy of a British Government.

[James Cartlidge]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

I will not. The Minister has 15 minutes in which to make his point. [Interruption.] Okay, I will give way.

[James Cartlidge]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I have a specific question: does he support our target of 2.5%?

[John Healey]

As has been pointed out in this debate, 2.5% is an aspiration for when economic circumstances allow—there is no timetable, no plan and no credibility. The last time this country spent 2.5% of GDP on defence was in 2010, under a Labour Government.

I turn to mismanagement and waste. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch said that mismanagement and waste runs widely across defence. The PAC report found that only two of the 46 MOD equipment programmes are rated as “highly likely” to be delivered on time, on budget and on quality. Many defence procurement programmes are being delayed and are over budget. Ministers are failing British taxpayers and British troops but, most concerning of all, they have no plan to fix this. My hon. Friend said that one of our major concerns is that the MOD is putting off decisions—serious threats, serious problems and a serious lack of action from the Government to fix them.

The third area I want to mention is transparency. Civilian authority over our UK military involves accountability to elected civilian Ministers and elected Members of this House. Reducing MOD transparency is a theme that runs through both reports. The Defence Committee says it is “unacceptable” and the PAC says the MOD has refused even to publish a full equipment plan this year—that is the Minister’s responsibility—despite

“undertaking the same depth of financial analysis as in previous years.”

That should worry all Members, and it has been a growing concern of mine for some months. Whether it is Royal Navy ships’ days at sea or MACA agreements struck with other Departments, data that had previously been published and released to me is now being withheld. Instead of responding to my questions, Ministers are now saying, “We will write to you instead.” I am currently awaiting 26 letters, some of them dating back as far as December.

There are, of course, legitimate security reasons why some information cannot be released, but there are also obvious political reasons why a Government nearing an election would not want some of this information to be made public.

The Defence Committee expressed an important and clear warning in its report. Threats are increasing, just as concern is increasing about the state of our armed forces not just from the members of these Committees and from Members on both sides of the House but from Ministers, too. The Minister for Security, the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), and even the Defence Secretary are publicly challenging their own Government’s defence policy in the press. The Defence Secretary is making arguments in the Daily Mail that he failed to win with the Chancellor. I feel for the Minister for Defence Procurement, who is almost the last man standing by the Government’s defence policy.

Labour will always do what is required to defend the country. If we win the confidence of the British people at the next election, our pledge is that Britain will be better defended under Labour. First, we will reinforce the protection of the UK homeland. Secondly, we will ensure that our NATO obligations are met in full. Thirdly, we will make our allies our strategic strength. Fourthly, we will renew the nation’s moral contract with those who serve. And fifthly, we will drive deep reform of defence, and we will direct defence investment first to British jobs and British business. This is how Labour will make our country secure at home and strong abroad. We will consult across the House in doing so because we want our plan to be not just Labour’s plan but Britian’s plan to be better defended in future.