Armed Forces Readiness and Defence Equipment

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

The Chair of the PAC is entirely right, although in the MOD context, if it is groundhog day, “groundhog” sounds like a vehicle that has slipped to the right.

More recently, after a detailed inquiry, the Defence Committee, on which I serve, published a damning report on 4 February 2024, entitled simply “Ready for War?”. I have served on the Committee since 2017 and this is one of the punchiest reports we have ever produced. In answer to the question in the title, the all-party Committee, which includes six former MOD Ministers, concluded:

“Despite the United Kingdom spending approximately £50 billion a year on defence (plus more for Ukraine) the UK’s Armed Forces require sustained ongoing investment to be able to fight a sustained, high-intensity war, alongside our allies, against a peer adversary. ”

In plainer English, and as the subsequent detail in the report starkly points out, despite a considerable outlay of taxpayer’s cash, we could not fight a sustained war with Putin’s Russia for more than a couple of months before we ran out of ammunition and fighting equipment, not least as we have very few tanks, ships or combat aircraft in reserve. The full report can be found online.

Given that it takes years to build a modern warship—a totally ridiculous 11 years in the case of the new Type 26 frigate—and four years to build a Typhoon fighter, if we had to fight what the strategists sometimes describe as a “come as you are war”, one with little further warning, we would have to rely on whatever equipment we had to hand or could rapidly remobilise. We simply do not have enough war-winning kit to win as it is. As the Public Accounts Committee’s report on the 10-year equipment plan illustrates starkly, the difference between what the MOD aspires to buy and the funding it is likely to have available is £17 billion. However, it is worse because the three services account for the plan on a different basis. Without going into all the technicalities, an apples and apples comparison across the three services shows that the gap is £29 billion. Even beyond gaps in capability of our kit, our greatest weakness is now the lack of skilled personnel to operate and maintain the equipment that we do have. Without them—and far too many of them are leaving, as the Chair of the Defence Committee said—even multi-billion dollar aircraft systems simply remain in the hangar.

One perfect example of how dysfunctional the MOD has now become in relation to people is the saga of Capita—or, forgive me, “Crapita”, as it is now affectionally known to the Defence Committee. It has totally messed up the recruitment system for the British Army. A few years ago, its share price topped £4; today, it is barely 13 pence. Everyone in Defence knows that the outsourced contract has been a disaster, yet absolutely no one in the upper echelons of the Department has the moral courage to sack the company. The Defence Secretary recently described the situation in The Times as “ludicrous”. He is absolutely right. Indeed, no doubt he has made a note of his own comments on his own famous spreadsheet, but still nothing actually happens. Capita limps on as the Army bleeds out—with, in some parts of the Army, three soldiers now leaving for every one that Capita somehow, painfully, manages to recruit. If we think we are going to deter the likes of Vladimir Putin in this manner, we are living on a different planet, in a parallel universe, in a fantasy dimension.

Given that we now spend the thick end of £50 billion a year on defence, the British taxpaying public are quite entitled to ask why so little of our defence capability works properly. Why are some of the Army’s fighting vehicles 60 years old? Why do we have hardly any battle tanks that actually work? Why do we have hardly any submarines that are now regularly put to sea? Why do we have aircraft carriers that perennially break down whenever they try to leave port? Bluntly, it is because we now have a Ministry of Defence that has become in recent years a gigantic, sclerotic bureaucracy; constantly hidebound by needless, self-generated red tape; obsessed with process rather than outcomes; in which some senior civil servants are now more interested in wokery than weaponry, endlessly ripped off by some of their own major contractors, such as Boeing, to name but one; and in which key elements of our fighting equipment are so old—and the procurement system for replacing them so broken—that we now cannot fight a major war with Russia for more than a few weeks, as it well knows.

Moreover, as the Red Book clearly shows in tables 2.1 and 2.2, we are cutting the core UK defence budget next year by £2.5 billion and playing “smoke and mirrors” with the donations to Ukraine and with addressing an overspend on the nuclear enterprise from the Treasury reserve in order to pretend otherwise. This act of what the Russians call “maskirovka”, or strategic deception, is wholly unworthy of a Conservative Government. If Members happen to believe, as I do, that the role of our armed forces is determinedly to save lives by convincing any potential aggressor that, were they to attack us, we would defeat them, then we are palpably failing.

This is not an intellectual parlour game. Ultimately, this is about whether our grandchildren are going to grow up in someone else’s re-education camp, but we might not know that if we walked into the current MOD. We can try to blame the military, for instance, for so frequently over-specifying new military equipment, such as Ajax, that it enters service many years late, but in the end the responsibility lies with the politicians who, theoretically at least, are supposed to be in charge.

The Romans had a famous saying about military matters: “Si vis pacem, para bellum”—he who desires peace save-line3should prepare for war. Given that the Secretary of State, the man who runs the Department, has told us that we are in a pre-war world, surely we had better start preparing for it, if we are to have any chance whatsoever of preventing it, and we should now do that in earnest, before it is too late.

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

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I know that he is coming towards the end of his speech. Would he care to remark on a couple of slightly more optimistic features of deterrence, because deterrence of conventional forces depends on far more than an equal balance of equipment, even though, as he says, we are nowhere near achieving that? It also depends on our allies and others who will fight in the same cause. Does he not accept that it is not just enough to take our defence spending up to 3% or more, such as the 5% we regularly spent through the cold war, but essential to ensure that our American allies remain totally involved in the deterrence process and that the Ukrainians succeed in fending off Russia, because if they succeed we can contain Russia in the future, as we successfully did in the past?

[Mr Francois]

I agree with every word my right hon. Friend, the former eminent Chairman of the Defence Committee, just said. My one caveat is that the MOD’s excuse for these capability gaps is that we can rely on allies to fight with us. But they will be relying on us, and if we are unable to support them or they are on wartime tasks elsewhere, things might go horribly wrong.

I say all of this not just as someone who served proudly as a Territorial Army infantry officer in my local Royal Anglian Regiment during the cold war; not just as someone who is still very proud to carry the late Queen’s commission; not just as a former veterans and then Armed Forces Minister in the Ministry of Defence, albeit almost a decade ago; but most of all, as I said at Prime Minister’s questions last week, as the devoted son of a D-day veteran. Stoker 1st Class Reginal Francois died when I was 40 years of age. He told me one night of the carnage—his word—that he witnessed that day, albeit from offshore, on a minesweeper named HMS Bressay. In the afternoon, they were opposite Omaha beach.

Let me quote Shakespeare’s famous phrase:

“This story shall the good man teach his son.”

My father was a good man. The story that he told me was of a country that eventually, reluctantly, had to go to war against the evil of Nazi tyranny because for years its politicians had been so parsimonious—he actually said “tight”—and so naive that when Nazism emerged, we completely failed to deter it. That is the lesson of the 1930s, but it was also his lesson to me.

My father made me take a solemn vow that, as his son, I would never take living in a free country for granted, because, as he said, too many good men had died to achieve it. Two years after we had that conversation, he was dead. That is why I am here this afternoon. That is why I came into politics in the first place. As a wartime serviceman, my father was a great admirer of Winston Churchill, our greatest ever Prime Minister, who led this country through a war of national survival and then lost a general election for his trouble. When I walked into the Chamber earlier this afternoon, I could still see the damage caused when the Chamber was bombed in 1941. Churchill insisted that it not be repaired, lest we forget, and he was right.

In summary, I may not be my father’s contemporary, that famously courageous MP, Leo Amery, so I cannot claim to “speak for England” on this matter, but I was elected to speak for the people of Rayleigh and Wickford, and so, on their behalf, I issue this stark warning today. The skies are darkening. Brutal dictators with powerful weapons at their disposal are on the rise. The democracies are on the backfoot rather than the front. History tells us time and again, and indeed ad nauseam, that the appeasement of dictators—be they called Adolf Hitler or Vladimir Putin—does not work. We should be increasing the defence budget to at least 3% of GDP—what my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) used to call “at least three to keep us free”—not cutting it, as we now are, and pretending that we are not. The first duty of Government, above all others, is the defence of the realm, and we forget that at our peril. Si vis pacem, para bellum.

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[Mr Jones]

It is laughable, as my right hon. Friend says. We need to make sure that we actually invest, because this is about skills and about ensuring that we have the workforce.

We have seen the effects when we just pull out of such work. We cannot look at our skills base as a tap, which we turn on when we want it and turn off again when we do not. We cannot do so, because we have seen the costs of that—for example, on the Astute programme. To be political, it was again the Conservative Government who stopped building submarines, so we had a gap in skills, and it has taken all the effort recently to rebuild that skills base and ensure we get it back. We must have such a skills base continually, and that has to be done by working with our European allies. Whether the zealots of Brexit and the anti-Europeans like it or not, if we are talking about things such as stockpiles, we do have to work with allies and make sure that we can deliver them through the supply chain we have.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

No. I am sorry, but I do not have the time.

I now come on to what will happen after the next general election. Is there going to be a massive increase in defence expenditure whoever wins the election? No, there is not. We know that, so let us just tell the public that. What we need to ensure is that we get the maximum effect from what we do spend. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), who speaks for the Labour party on defence, will—if he gets the job—have a big task facing him if we are successful at the next general election. My heart sinks a little when he talks about reviews. Yes, we need to have a review, but we also need action straightaway.

It is now critical that we take some key decisions, and there are very difficult discussions to be had, not just with the British people about where Britain is realistically in the world today, but with some of the members of the armed forces and the chiefs, in saying, “We’re going to do this, and we’re going to do it well, and we’re going to make sure we are safe as a nation.” Is that defeatism or saying that Britain is finished? No, it is not. I think we have a proud future, and we have some great military and diplomatic assets, including in the way we do things. However, we should not delude ourselves that we will be going back to some pre-Suez or pre-second world war global Britain as an imperialist power. We are just not going to be able to do that, and I think we have to be honest with the British people.

There also now has to be speed. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) said about munition shelling, we cannot have a situation in which it takes a year for munition stocks to be replaced. The tempo has to be increased, so action will have to be taken very quickly. I am all in favour of a review and a study of policy—in the last few years in this country we have lacked any thought-out policy work or strategy, and we need that—but we also need action.

It is a daunting task that will face any Government after the next general election, but let us be proud of the members of our armed forces, who work on our behalf to keep us secure. There is an impression that defence is somehow a Conservative issue; I am sorry, but it is not a Conservative issue. A lot of the men and women in our armed forces come from the poorest and most deprived communities in our country, but they are proud to serve their country, and I think we should be proud of them. We should give them the clear commitment that they have our backing, but be clear with them that we must be realistic about the tasks we ask them to do to keep us safe.

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[James Cartlidge]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s clarification. Either way, I think we can all agree that it is important that we understand the extent to which our armed forces are ready and are out there serving the country as we speak.

Our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is entering its sixth decade of service, and our armed forces have helped us to become Ukraine’s most front-footed ally. We have trained more than 60,000 Ukrainian military personnel since 2014, and we are delivering more than £7 billion of military aid to Ukraine within our overall aid package worth almost £12 billion. That support is unwavering, with the recent announcement of our latest £2.5 billion package of military support for Ukraine being a £200 million uplift on the previous two years. Beyond our support for Ukraine, our armed forces are participating in every single NATO mission.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene. I did not apply to speak in this debate because I could not be sure that I would be here at the end. Will he impress upon the House how our aid to Ukraine is vital because, if Ukraine successfully thwarts Russia, all those dread scenarios about an attack on NATO will not happen? Similarly, although President Trump is a worry, it is at least a relief that he has begun to say that, provided Europe does its bit, he will continue with America’s support for NATO, should he be elected.

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The hon. Member for Rochdale (George Galloway) accuses us of imperialism in how we deploy our armed forces, but the whole purpose of our support is precisely to help Ukraine resist the imperialism of the Kremlin that he has shamefully supported while condemning what he calls the “Zelensky regime”. We heard him say it, and it is absolutely shameful.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It shows why I want to see us supporting our sovereign capability, because where the Spitfire was there in the 1930s, we hope that the global combat air programme will be there in the 2030s.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Will the Minister allow a brief intervention?

[James Cartlidge]

As my right hon. Friend has already intervened, I hope he will allow me to make some progress and refer to comments from colleagues.

Obviously, there has been particular debate about spending. The shadow Secretary of State was unable to answer whether Labour would match the figure of 2.5%, but a number of my colleagues wanted us to go further and faster. This point was put well by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord). The Chair of the Defence Committee and others have suggested that we should look back to the sort of GDP figures in the cold war, although they did not necessarily say that we should go to exactly those amounts. However, as was said by the hon. Gentleman, who I believe was in military intelligence, in those days almost all of eastern Europe was an armed camp full of Soviet divisions, whereas now those countries are in NATO, so the situation has changed profoundly.

As was rightly said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Sir Alec Shelbrooke)—one of my predecessors as Minister for Defence Procurement—if we increase defence by a significant amount, the money has to come from somewhere. An increase from the current level of about 2.3% to 3% equates to £20 billion, which is not a small amount of taxpayers’ money. Even an increase to 2.5% equates to an extra £6 billion. So it is Government policy to support that but to do so when we believe the economy can support it on a sustained basis.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) made a passionate speech about how there had, in effect, been a cut to defence spending in the Budget, and several other Members said the same. I do not agree, although I accept that there is a debate about it. It is about the difference between the main estimate and the supplementary estimate, and some people have said it is about the inclusion of nuclear. To me, the nuclear deterrent is fundamental to defence, so of course it should be in the defence budget. We are not going to take out GCAP or frigates, and we are certainly not going to take out the nuclear deterrent, which is at the heart of the UK’s defence.