Defence Supplementary Estimate 2021-22

Johnny Mercer Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me early in this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to start by talking about a couple of the points mentioned by the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), which I completely agree with, on mindset and attitude towards defence. He was nuanced and careful on that. As everybody knows, I have campaigned on defence issues for a long time. I am no expert on procurement and I pay tribute to this Minister, whom I worked alongside when I was a Minister, for his attitude towards it. I have found that there has been a significant step change there. When it comes to finance and investment the figures are undeniable and show that over about 50 years, roughly through to the 2020s, there was a decline in investment in defence, by Governments of all colours—we have seen that across the pitch. As this Prime Minister keeps mentioning, we have seen small increases between 2020 and 2022, and the projected increases as well, but I really want to get across to Members here today and to other Members that these increases are in CDEL—capital departmental expenditure limits. The problem with that is that our RDEL—resource departmental expenditure limits—which is our spending on people, continues either to flatline or decline. That means that the experience of those serving in the military continues to go down. Despite valiant work by lots of people to try to improve it, the reality is that if we continue to ask our people to do more and more with less and less, that affects the experience and the “elastic band” in the middle that is taken up by people who do it because they are patriots and believe in defence, as many Members of this House do. That is fine, but they get worn out and are then pushed into society, and a new group comes in. If we continue to have that mindset—that we can burn these people out because new ones will come in—we will see a degradation of defence capability, which we have seen, and we will end up with an integrated review such as we saw.

I thought some aspects of the IR were good, but I have said, both in public and in private—even though it is not easy to say—that aspects of it were dishonest. I do not think we can truly focus entirely on our capital spend and say that our defence capability has expanded so much because we have all this high-tech weaponry and suddenly have this huge shift to high-tech warfare, while also talking about contributary pensions in our armed forces for the first time in the UK’s history. Again, we need to look at what that means for people who are serving. I remember some painful discussions about that, and it was quite a lonely experience. Although the capital expenditure is exciting, we have to be really careful on our resource spend, which is incredibly important.

[Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. A smaller military would find it more difficult to go to train nations such as Ukraine. We have a very good tradition of having people train other nations to defend their sovereignty.

[Johnny Mercer]

That is a really fair point. That was the whole point of enforcing things such as the Ranger battalions, but it was founded really on something that is not true, which is that mass is irrelevant—it is not. Data, technology and all this stuff is important. But look at what is happening in Ukraine now. Why are the Ukrainians holding out when everybody talked about how they were going to get flattened by the Russians? They are holding out because warfare has fundamentally changed: it has changed from the cold war—this is not the cold war reheated—and it has changed from Iraq and Afghanistan. These are Ukrainians, not Iraqis or Afghans riven by tribal disputes. It is fundamentally different and the technology has changed it. What can be done with an NLAW—a next generation light anti-tank weapon—is so different. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) was in the Army, much like when I was, people had to fly an anti-tank weapon—it actually had a wire coming out the back—and basically steer it on to the tank. The chances of doing that in combat were pretty slim—

[Bob Stewart]

indicated dissent.

[Johnny Mercer]

Perhaps not for my right hon. Friend—I am sure he hit it every time—but I can only speak for myself and I found it pretty hard to hit the target. These new NLAW weapons are fantastic. They require such a low train-the-trainer base that we can teach Ukrainians to do it. According to a study released last week by the United States special operations community, 280 of the 300 Javelins that the US has given to the Ukrainian forces have had mobility kills. That is a ratio that we have never seen before in conflict.

Let me say finally on the capital spend that yes, that stuff is important, but if we do not have the right quality of people to stand and fight, who know that they are going to be treasured and looked after by their nation—I bore everyone with that all the time—warfare does not work. We are seeing how it works now in the Ukrainian system. We need to be very careful in that space.

[Bob Stewart]

My hon. Friend, who is my very good friend, has cast aspersions on how good I am with a light anti-tank weapon and, of course, he was correct: useless. The point is that this NLAW, held by men and women who have a basic, infantry-type role, can sort out a Russian attack that is highly technology driven. We have to think again about why, when the integrated review is done, it is done and dusted, finished and stuck. We military people—there are a lot of us around the Chamber—know very well that no plan survives contact with the enemy. It is the same for the integrated review: adjust it. Stop these infantry battalions going, particularly the one that, as my good friend the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) said, I was involved with: the Mercian Regiment. I admit to the Minister that I am biased, but for goodness’ sake he has only a few weeks to stop the cuts so that we keep our infantry. They are invaluable in the new kind of warfare.

[Johnny Mercer]

My right hon. Friend makes a really valid point. Of all the decisions that we make on defence, I will genuinely be stunned if the Government proceed with that reduction in personnel, given what is happening at the moment.

Let me finish by saying something about attitude and mindset. I am obviously going to bring it back to people, but let me talk about what happens if we consistently focus just on technology. I found the IR quite frustrating, because the focus was on not making bad press announcements about the removal of regiments, although we have obviously heard the example of 2 Mercian. If we have this attitude towards capital expenditure and think that we can win wars in essence just by fighting tech on tech and that people do not matter, that trickles down throughout the whole system and we end up in a place where we are prosecuting soldiers in Northern Ireland when they are 80 years old. It is all about attitude and mindset.

I have sat down so many times with Prime Ministers in this place and they have told me, “Johnny, there’re no votes in defence.” But that is not the point, because there are some things that we have to do to keep the nation safe—of course, they may then become prescient when Russia invades Ukraine and things like that—and they are the boring part. It is our job as legislators, MPs, Ministers and Prime Ministers to go ahead, bring people with us and get them to understand why defence matters. Even if they are not interested in the military, there is its long tail through communities such as mine in Plymouth and in defence industries; there is what veterans groups mean in communities like mine; and there is what it actually means for British people to see their 78-year-old grandfathers taken to court in Northern Ireland for fighting for the freedoms and privileges that we enjoy in this place, and how that feels for a whole generation of veterans. It really does trickle down and I urge Ministers to really think about that expenditure.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech. He is absolutely right that people claim there are no votes in defence. I would argue that there are no votes in defeat. Sadly, in the past year we have seen a reversal of our interests and influence in places such as Afghanistan and now, sadly, in Ukraine, where deterrence has now turned into defence. Although it may be true that it is not popular to spend money on insurance premiums, the alternative—finding out we are uninsured—is a lot worse.

[Johnny Mercer]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend.

[Mr Francois]

I defer to my hon. Friend’s operational service in Afghanistan and the bravery shown by our troops on the ground, of whom he was one. It is a fact that, for all the emphasis on technology, NATO was run out of town in the end by what some ill-informed commentators described as a “bunch of country boys”, who did not have submarines, satellites, artificial intelligence and all the rest of it, but who still won. My point is that, yes, we need high technology in warfare, but we also need trained personnel who are able to use it, and an obsession with technology is not in itself enough, is it?

[Johnny Mercer]

My right hon. Friend is completely right. The whole end of Afghanistan should be a deep inflection point for the west and our attitude to the utility of force and what we can actually achieve in the foreign policy space. What does victory look like? What are victory and defeat actually going to look like in Ukraine?

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I am sure that this will come up in the debate, but it is also about retention. We do have a problem in the military, across all the services, in retaining not only the people who are playing a supporting role, but those who are on the frontline. Can my hon. Friend say a few words about that?

[Johnny Mercer]

Yes, but I will finish here, as my final points are around the people. It really pains me deeply how these people feel after they have spent time in the military. For many of us, it was the most amazing time of our lives. People like me were incredibly lucky and had a great time, but there are many people, including many families, who feel very bitter about it. We have done that by the decisions we have made around investment in their housing, health, and education. They felt it when the Prime Minister decided to take £2 million out of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs.

Clearly, there is a review coming, which I am pleased about, so I say to Ministers that it would be ludicrous not to reinstate what has been cut. I also urge them to please think about the secondary and tertiary effects of how we look after people. It is not just a lonely, boring old song that some of us sing. Those of us who have been right at the tippy end of the spear in this nation’s operations will say that the most important thing to how our people fight and what makes them fight is the moral component. Our decisions in this place and how we advocate with our constituents about defence matter and they make a difference. I urge Ministers to take that with them as they move forward.