Defence Command Paper Refresh

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and grateful for his party’s support on Ukraine.

On the Haythornthwaite review and skills, right across Europe and the west we are seeing recruitment challenges in the military. I was with my New Zealand counterpart recently, and my Canadian counterpart, and they too have a challenge. The skills shortage across society is big, and it is no different in the armed forces, which is why we have to adapt rapidly and tackle some of the challenges.

On procurement, as I said, the figures have started to improve. Yes, there are challenges, and we could spend a whole day debating the reasons for those challenges. Complex procurement is not as straightforward as many people think, and the hon. Gentleman will know from the Scottish Government’s procurement issues that it is not straightforward to deal with. I certainly believe that if we invest in the people and are prepared to invest in continuity—if instead of having the senior responsible owners who help manage our projects here today and gone tomorrow, we ensure that they are there for the long term and link their incentives to success, and help them manage our projects—we will have a better chance of delivering better value for money.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May I express my admiration for my right hon. Friend’s dedicated and distinguished service as Defence Secretary? It is a sad commentary on the state of the special relationship that our American ally did not recognise his suitability to be the next Secretary-General of NATO.

My right hon. Friend will remember that successive Defence Committees, well before the invasion of Ukraine, argued that defence expenditure should never have been allowed to fall below 3% of GDP. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he was standing for the leadership in 2019, even expressed the wish that it should be at 4% of GDP, which would have taken us back to the cold war percentage of between 4% and 5.1% of GDP spent on defence. In what way does this refresh allow defence the potential to expand quickly if that extra money is belatedly made available?

[Mr Wallace]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. Long before I was doing this job, he was campaigning for defence to be properly apportioned the funding it deserved to keep this country safe, and I pay tribute to him for that. He has fought for that for many years.

Should there be an increase in funding for defence—and I seriously hope that there will be, based on our Prime Minister’s 2.5% pledge—and if we invest in our specialties and our skills, we can expand our armed forces when the threat increases. Finding a way to hold those skills on the books even if they are rarely used, is why it is important to develop a single armed forces Act. Currently we have legislation that says that if you want to join the reserves from the regulars, you have to leave the regulars and join a separate legal entity—the reserves. That prevents soldiers from going backwards and forwards and people from being mobilised in the way we want. We want to introduce a single armed forces Act. We think this will help us do that. Skills are at the core.

The second thing is the investment in rapid procurement—the ability to keep headroom in the budget to respond to the latest threat as the adversary changes. The third is making sure that we invest in sustainability and enablers, because there is no point in having all the frontline vehicles if you cannot get anywhere.