Foreign Affairs and Defence

Julian Brazier Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I am most grateful to the Foreign Secretary for giving way. [Hon. Members: “Shadow Foreign Secretary!”] Shadow Foreign Secretary, I should say. Will the shadow Foreign Secretary now apologise for the record of the last Government in respect of getting the Department for International Development to support the Ministry of Defence in the conflict in Afghanistan?

[David Miliband]

That is an absolutely shocking allegation. It is not true, and I want to tell the hon. Gentleman why. It is a shocking allegation because the idea that the last Government spent their time simply increasing the aid budget rather than increasing its quality is contradicted by every single independent report, national and international, on the issue. [Interruption.] I will come to his point about support for the MOD in a moment. This country has gone from being a laggard on international development to being recognised as the leader—not simply because of the amount of money spent, but because of how it is spent.

Anyone who spent time in southern Afghanistan—with officers from our armed forces, British diplomats and British aid workers—would go away proud of the work being done there. At the moment, a DFID official is the head of the combined military and civilian mission in southern Afghanistan. Frankly, it is nonsense to suggest that DFID officials and DFID money are not supporting our security and other priorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), who made a deeply sincere and moving speech that reminded us all what heroism is all about. This debate started with an outstanding speech by my right hon. Friend the new Foreign Secretary and there have been a number of maiden speeches, including excellent ones by my hon. Friends the Members for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), and the best maiden speech I think I have ever heard, from my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). I look forward to the winding-up speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who I am delighted to see is our new Secretary of State for Defence.

I am particularly pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Mr Luff) is sitting on the Front Bench in his role as a Defence Minister. He is part of the strong Ministry of Defence team, which will be grappling with what, frankly, is a nightmare in the strategic defence and security review. I cannot think of a better team to do it, but it will face a huge mismatch: the resources available have dropped from 5.5% of national GDP in the 1980s to 2.2% today—a fall of 60%—at a time when in Afghanistan we are involved in the bloodiest war since Korea. Moreover, the grim news coming out of Korea reminds us that, at the other end of the military spectrum, nuclear proliferation among some deeply unattractive countries is a real threat.

There is a temptation to focus on Afghanistan. As the representative of a garrison city proud to be home to the Argylls, to whom we gave the freedom of the city recently, and the 3rd Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment—a Territorial Army battalion—nobody needs to remind me how important it is to support our troops in Afghanistan in every way that we can. However, it is important to remember that very few of the wars in which we have participated over the past 100 years have been expected: 48 hours before the invasion of the Falklands nobody expected that war to take place; less than six months before the first Gulf war, the Ministry of Defence had categorically ruled out any possibility of deploying armoured troops outside the NATO area; and hours before 9/11 anyone who had said that we would be involved in a long-term conflict in Afghanistan would, to put it mildly, have been thought mad.

That is why we must maintain a full range of capabilities and not allow the new strategic defence review to reshape our armed forces simply around the immediate pressing needs of Afghanistan. How then are we to square the impossible mismatch between keeping a full range of military capabilities and the fact that, although the Treasury team has done well in protecting the defence budget so far, nobody believes that extra money will be available? I put it to the House that that cannot be done without tackling the spiralling cost of manpower. As the son of a Regular Army officer, I have, over the years, campaigned for better treatment for the wounded, for better housing for the armed forces, for the protection of their pensions and for a range of allowances, and although I welcome every word of what we have said on the military covenant—I am sure that we will deliver it—we must recognise that the current model is close to being broken.

Most major countries regard defence as an activity of the nation and, although their professional armed forces form an important component, it is not the only one. We have many reasons to be proud of our armed forces, but we must consider how others do things. There are two main models: most European countries, apart from France, use a conscription-based model, so most people pass through the armed forces. Russia and China use the same model. Alternatively, other English-speaking countries, which are fighting alongside us in Afghanistan, use a balanced mixture of regular and volunteer reserve forces, as we always used to do, including in both world wars. Almost alone, we are heading towards having almost all-professional armed forces, and that is extremely expensive. Of course we must look after them in every way that we can, but the costs of pay, allowances, pensions, housing and so on make such an approach very expensive.

Such an approach also means having a huge divide between the armed forces and a civilian world that rightly looks with great favour on the armed forces but understands little about them, and ensures that there is no framework for expansion. Almost half of America’s pilots, including a third of their fast jet fighter squadrons, are in the Air Guard or US Air Force Reserve, and America’s naval reserve has an aircraft carrier, whereas our Royal Auxiliary Air Force has no fighter pilots, let alone squadrons, and the Royal Naval Reserve has no vessels. Even the shrinking and hard-worked Territorial Army represents a much smaller proportion of ground forces than do its English-speaking counterparts: the figure is a quarter compared with nearly half for Australia and Canada and much more than half for America.

This review offers the opportunity to reconnect our splendid professional forces with outside thinking from the civilian world, to retain unutilised capabilities that would otherwise become unaffordable in the volunteer reserves and to keep a capacity to expand in order to face that unexpected conflict that may come around the corner.

That does not have to mean a compromise in standards. The highest scoring tank regiment in the first Gulf war was the 4th US Marine Division Reserve Tank Battalion from Seattle, all volunteer reservists. British units can do it too. My former regiment, 21 Special Air Service, had a squadron in Afghanistan last year. I am not giving away any secrets by saying that they got two military crosses—again, they are volunteer reservists.

On land, important capabilities, such as much of our heavy armour and artillery, could be transferred to the Territorial Army. In the air, a fast jet fighter pilot costs £4 million to train. In America, he would be likely to go into the Air Guard; in Britain, all that money is burnt when he ceases his service. At sea, we are reliant for the protection of our ports on an anti-mining capability tied up in 16 vessels and 16 regular crews. Why do we not have volunteer reserve crews so that we can work them round the clock if there is a serious mining threat to our ports?

All these things can be done, but they require imagination and good quality volunteers and leadership. Sadly, the word is that neither the Royal Air Force nor the Royal Navy are considering any radical options at all. Perhaps worst of all, the Army, the one service that has a volunteer reserve of some size, was, at least until the election, considering an absurd model of replacing the current structure with, instead of Territorial Army units, a pool of manpower bolted on to regular units with no identity, no premises of their own and no opportunities for command at regimental level. Such a structure is most unlikely to attract high-quality men and women willing, at the end of a full week spent on a demanding job, to train and give up their time to serve their country. Let us remember that they serve, too: 16 Territorials and one air reservist have been killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past seven years.

We need to address this issue. Over the time that I have been in Parliament, I have always spoken up for the regular forces, but I have also come to believe that we cannot continue with the current model. We are out of line with all our English-speaking counterparts and it is not affordable. There is no prospect whatsoever of the combined staff in the MOD considering these solutions. They will do so only if Ministers, and I have the greatest confidence in the new team, make them do so and bring people into the teams—one possible name is Richard Holmes, a former director of reserves and cadets and a very distinguished military academic—who are willing to do so. We will be reconstituting the all-party reserve forces group next month and we will be playing a small role on the outside.

The whole House is rightly proud of our professional armed forces, but we should be proud of our volunteer reserves, too. We must recognise that the current virtually all-professional model is close to bust and that unless we shift towards a better balanced structure, our ability to respond to the unexpected threat will disappear altogether.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), who over many years has illuminated the House with forceful thoughts on these questions. I hope that he and some of the other defence experts who have spoken are listened to, because, as I shall seek to argue, we need some serious new strategic thinking.

First, let me pay tribute to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), the hon. Members for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for their remarkable, warm, witty, passionate and lovely speeches. They reminded me of my first time 16 years ago. Frankly, I am as excited and nervous now as I was then. We have heard from hon. Members who will make a big contribution to the House of Commons.

Before I focus on Afghanistan and NATO, I want to invite the House to consider that the Prime Minister, unfortunately, misled the House yesterday—inadvertently, I am sure. He said, in response to a question of mine, that

“Labour’s allies in the European Parliament”

include

“the Self Defence of the Republic of Poland party, whose leader, Andrzej Lepper, said that

‘Hitler had a really good programme’.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2010; Vol. 510, c. 48.]

While we have been sitting today, I have received an e-mail from Dr Rafal Pankowski, the expert on these matters in Warsaw, saying:

“Did he really say that? I find it incredible the British PM could have shot himself in the foot in this way. Self-Defence as such is no longer in the”

European Parliament,

“but its surviving leading ex-member, (Ryszard Czarnecki) is in the ECR Group!”

For the benefit of Members, the ECR group is, of course, the Conservative-created European parliamentary group, the European Conservatives and Reformists. So, there we have the Prime Minister, inadvertently I am sure, misleading the House because he is relying on party propaganda. He has not yet adjusted to the fact that he is the Prime Minister of our nation and must be absolutely accurate in what he says.

Let me quote another sentence from yesterday’s Loyal Address debate. When talking about Afghanistan, the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) said:

“I…can barely stop myself crying out, ‘Enough. No more. Bring them home.’ I know that we cannot overnight abandon commitments to allies and the Afghans themselves, but I urge my right hon. Friends to scale back our aims realistically and bring our young soldiers home with all due speed.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2010; Vol. 510, c. 36.]

I have for several years sat and listened to the tributes to the dead and fallen, weeping internally, as many Members have. I think again and again of a poem of Siegfried Sassoon, which I have altered slightly:

“‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line.

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,

And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Helmand with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.”

[Mr Brazier]

indicated assent.

[Mr MacShane]

I see that the hon. Gentleman knows the words as well as I do.

It is time to assert the principle that war is too important a matter to be left to generals. We need to assert the authority of this House and the authority of a politically elected Government over the lack of strategy in Afghanistan. The Canadian Parliament has done that. Canada’s Conservative Foreign Minister, Mr Lawrence Cannon, has confirmed that, “In 2011, we’re out.” So, Canada, our closest English-speaking ally, is saying that enough is enough.

We began yesterday, as we have begun every Prime Minister’s questions since June 2003, with the Prime Minister reading out the names of the dead. We cannot continue, Wednesday after Wednesday in this Parliament, reporting the blood sacrifice of our young soldiers and officers. I want to help the new Prime Minister so that he can come to the Dispatch Box without that grim piece of paper to read out. That is why we need to say clearly to the generals, “Your strategy is wrong.” We need to move from a policy of confrontation to one of containment. Our strategy must absolutely be based on finding a political solution. We need more jaw-jaw, and less war-war.

Before the election, there was, frankly, a general briefing by too many generals against the then Prime Minister about what was happening in Afghanistan and the support for the Army there. Sadly, the Secretary of State for Defence was part of that shameful and shameless procedure. He is now known around the region as 13th-century Fox. His breathtaking insult of the Afghan people has caused huge damage in the region. He shows the colonial mentality of a Lord Salisbury. President Karzai is an obsessive reader of the UK and American press. The 13th-century insult of the Secretary of State has set back good relations not just with Afghanistan but with other countries in the world. Instead of apologising for his insult—I hope that he will have the grace to do that when he winds up tonight—the Secretary of State has tried to defend and downplay his remarks. That is a disastrous start and it would be no bad thing if he were transferred to another post where he could do no harm.

I also appeal to the Conservative press to stop always simply supporting the generals and to start supporting the soldiers. I have, or had, here a front page of The Sun from February, but I cannot lay my hands on it. “Blitzed Taliban on run” screams the front page of The Sun on 15 February 2010 about the Marjah offensive, and it quotes a Major General Messenger saying:

“Nothing has stopped the mission from progressing”,

yet only last week another general, General Stanley McChrystal said of the Marjah offensive that it is “a bleeding ulcer”.

We need some British generals who will tell the truth, like General McChrystal. We need an Alanbrooke, a latter-day “master of strategy”, to quote the inscription on Lord Alanbrooke’s statue outside the Ministry of Defence. I wonder whether General McChrystal knew that he was echoing the very words of Mikhail Gorbachev 25 years ago, who described Afghanistan not as a bleeding ulcer, but as a “bleeding wound”. It is time to admit that we are not going to win this war. Our object must now be to change and to support our boys, not the generals as they send them to be IED fodder.

What should that strategy consist of? In a word, statecraft must replace warcraft. We need a political solution that will involve compromise. Of course we must ensure that al-Qaeda does not return, and we must work in close collaboration with the United States and with our NATO partners, but NATO is doing itself no good talking up a war it cannot win. We need long-term thinking. It is absurd to have army chiefs rotating every six months. Instead of one six-year war, we have 12 six-month wars.

The Taliban are not stupid. Why fight face to face when planting an IED is just as effective? Yes, our soldiers will always chase them out and behave heroically as they do so, but it is like squeezing a balloon. The can-do, will-do powerpoint style of the generals must be replaced by a real feel for the tribal and political reality and relations of the region. The MOD must allow a fuller discussion by all officers, including junior officers, of their real views and thoughts. We have to accept that Pashtuns will not be told how to run their lives by outsiders in uniforms, and that applies as much to Tajiks as to NATO soldiers.

We must widen out our reach regionally. China has invested $3.5 billion in copper mines in Afghanistan. Iran wants a stable Afghanistan, because Iranians are suffering from huge drug epidemics. Above all, we need to get India and Pakistan talking and working together successfully to find a solution to Kashmir. We heard talk about Afghanistan and Pakistan from the Foreign Secretary, but he did not mention the Pakistan-India link. Until India and Pakistan are at the conference table finding a solution to Kashmir, where 70,000 Muslims have been killed since the state was put under Indian army control 20 years ago, we will have no solution in Pakistan.

That requires regionalising the conflict. We need to get the UN more involved. Can Britain promote a south-west Asian version of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe so that China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan can work out some problems together? We need to show more respect for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan publicly––unlike the “13th century” remark––but use tougher language privately. The United States, the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, our European Union partners and our other main partners must come together to draw up a common strategy. The start of a new Government is a chance. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) put forward his innovative idea of a sovereign strategic base in the country to prevent al-Qaeda coming back, but no longer trying to fight and die.

There are other issues to do with NATO, the Baltic states and Poland that I would like to have addressed, had time permitted. However, this is the most important turning point in our military history this century. We must get it right. I hope the Government will do so.