Ajax Programme

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

The hon. Gentleman asks serious questions. I just reiterate that there is a difference between what a vehicle can do and what it is certified to do. With things like fire or manoeuvre and the speed limitation, we should not read into them that the vehicle is incapable either of firing on the move or of going above 20 mph. That is not the case; it is simply that that is not what it is certified to do at the moment.

The hon. Gentleman also highlights, perfectly reasonably, the issues that I touched on about noise and vibration. On noise, there are mitigations in place at the moment, and there are further mitigations in terms of the headsets. When we introduced Ajax, the problems occurred in using the standard British Army headset for use in armoured vehicles; the concern that we came across in testing the inner ear was that that was not adequate for the task.

There are two issues that we are therefore looking at: the headset and the noise of the vehicle itself. The noise can have two components; it can be mechanical, but it can also be the electronic noise generated by the aircraft that is communicating with the headsets. I wish that I could tell the hon. Gentleman that a week on Tuesday it will all be resolved. I cannot, but I can tell him that there are issues that we are seriously working through with the suppliers to ensure that we get there.

With vibration, General Dynamics has not had the same experience that we have had, apparently: over many thousands of miles of driving, it has not seen the same issues. That is why we are going to Millbrook, which will have sensors all over the vehicles to test where the vibration is happening and whether we can isolate it. It may be resolvable quickly; it may not be. I can commit only to telling the hon. Gentleman that we will do the work and that I will ensure that people are aware of how it progresses.

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

It is encouraging that General Dynamics has been able to make a vehicle work satisfactorily in the United States, so will my hon. Friend confirm that the Government will not be rushed into bringing this already much delayed vehicle into service until these problems are solved to the satisfaction of the people in the armed forces who will have to fight in it?

[Jeremy Quin]

I am so glad that my right hon. Friend asks that question, because it requires a very simple answer: absolutely. Unfortunately, as he rightly says, there has been a long pattern of delays with the project, but we are not going to take into service something that does not meet our requirements. It is a firm price contract; we need to have it right, and take it into service when it is right to do that. We are not going to obfuscate in order to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Dr Julian Lewis.

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

I hope we are not so naive as to believe that the Taliban will stick to any peace deal unless they recognise adverse consequences for breaking it. So will the Government take steps, in conjunction with the US and other NATO allies, to find a new strategy, possibly based on a strategic base in the region, to deter the Taliban and protect Afghanistan from a total Islamist takeover after our land forces have totally been withdrawn?

[Mr Wallace]

My right hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point and a very real suggestion. The US, in that peace agreement, chose not to make it conditions-based at the end. That was a regret for most of the NATO allies, as we thought that that was important. However, a lot of people have lost their lives in that conflict and sacrificed a lot, and I do not intend that to be for nothing. As I said, we will explore all options that we can to make sure that we protect not only Britain’s interests and citizens, but her allies.

We are also protected by international law in doing what we need to do to defend ourselves if a threat emanates from that country or any other around the globe, and we have the capabilities to do that. Allies will continue to talk, and our support for and funding to the Afghan Government will continue to at least 2024. The one thing I would say to the Taliban is that they will remember what happened the last time they played host to al-Qaeda.

Carrier Strike Group Deployment

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

First and foremost, we cannot separate trade from security. We need to secure our trade. The hon. Gentleman’s party’s whole economic basis used to be about exporting oil around the world. If a country cannot export its oil, it cannot run its economy, according to some of the Scottish National party’s previous manifestoes. It is really important that we secure our trade and do not let the values in the rules-based system be undermined far away until it is too late and it gets close to our shores. That is really important.

I am not ashamed at all that this deployment will also be linked to trade. I am proud of standing on British-made equipment, made by Scottish hands, and English, Welsh and Northern Irish hands, and I am proud that there is equipment on those ships that can be used for a whole range of things—humanitarian and non-military-method means, and all sorts of things. We should be really proud that we will be showing that off to the world.

We will not leave Britain undefended. We will still have our Type 23s, our Type 45s and our P-8s, which are based in Lossiemouth, as excellent maritime patrol vessels. We will still have a number of capabilities. Our submarines will be on watch based out of Faslane. I pay tribute to those submariners who will be departing from Faslane to join and escort the carrier group. They do an amazing job, and it is something special to understand what submariners do.

We have had long-scheduled deployments into the Black sea. This is not new. It is not an increase or decrease. We have taken a view that we should stick to our planned exercises and deployment. I think that is the right thing to do—to say that we will not be intimidated from it and that we will stick up for our friends in the Black sea—Romania, Turkey and all those other nations that we work alongside. We will be doing that, as we had planned long before the recent friction we saw up in Ukraine. I hope the hon. Gentleman recognises that we are not off to go around picking a fight; we are there to stand up for our values and I think the Royal Navy will do a great job.

Fundamentally, this comes back to the point that we rely on each other. The security of Europe is incredibly important to the United Kingdom and to the continent of Europe. Even last year, in December, when the Russians appeared with a number of ships, the French, the British and the Dutch all set about that issue. We will continue to do so. As I said, the greatest thing about our friends and allies is that we are all in a partnership with solidarity, and that is the best way to defeat or push back our adversaries.

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

If we want the United States to help defend our interests in Europe, it is only right that we should help it defend common interests in the far east. Does the Secretary of State accept that having Americans intimately involved in this whole process adds to the deterrent effect of a carrier strike force? We do not want to get, in the digital age, into a situation where a surface ship, no matter how powerful, up against a peer enemy armed with hypersonic missiles, might find itself at a fatal disadvantage, but for the deterrent effect of our joint activity with our strategic allies.

[Mr Wallace]

I note my right hon. Friend’s final phrase, “strategic allies”. Not only are they allies, but they make a strategic difference, and they stand for the rule of law and the same values we do. Today, I met the US commander on the Queen Elizabeth. He said not only that it was an amazing ship, but that they look forward to working with us. As my right hon. Friend said, it is about partnership: “You attack us, you attack us all” is a strong message around the world. The number of people from different countries around the world who have got in touch wanting to be part of this deployment speaks volumes about what is going on in their neighbourhood and their backyard. Finally, as my right hon. Friend rightly says, the United States has always been a significant net contributor to the security of Europe; it is only right that we do the same when its interests are under threat.

Afghanistan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I do not accept that we have not achieved what we were there to do in the first place. We went into Afghanistan as a direct consequence of what happened on 11 September 2001. Article 5 was invoked because an attack on one was an attack on us all, and that attack originated in Afghanistan. Since then, there has been no international terrorist attack launched from Afghanistan on the UK, the US or, indeed, any other NATO ally, so in that sense the mission was achieved.

Actually, the mission has gone far further, as we have explored in our exchanges on the urgent question: in the 20 years that we have been there, we have given the opportunity for the Afghan Government to establish and strengthen and for an Afghan civil society to flourish. I truly believe that we have set the conditions within which a political process now has the best chances of success.

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

I know that the Minister will take back the very strong feelings expressed on both sides of the House that interpreters and other locally employed civilians must not be abandoned to a terrible fate at the hands of our enemies.

When the Minister says that the military process is over, does he not realise that the only thing that will prevent the Taliban from going back to the position they were in before we intervened 20 years will be the threat that if they try to overthrow the Government, they themselves will face a military consequence—if necessary, from outside the borders of the country? If he rules that out, he is basically giving them carte blanche.

[James Heappey]

As my right hon. Friend will know from his extensive experience of peace processes around the world, it is very likely—indeed, almost certain—that a lasting peace settlement in Afghanistan will involve the Taliban as part of the Afghan Government. It is in all our interests to support the political process as it plays out, but if there is a return to an ungoverned space that gives succour to international terrorism that is a threat to the UK homeland or the interests of our allies, we of course reserve the right to protect our interests, both unilaterally and multilaterally through NATO.

Strength of the UK’s Armed Forces

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

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

May I warmly endorse what the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) just said about our late, dear colleague Cheryl Gillan?

It is often said, in the military context, that quantity has a quality all its own. That is perfectly true, but it does not mean that the strength of the armed forces should be measured by their size alone. A revolutionary advance in military technology in the hands of a few can defeat almost any number of assailants; think of the Somme and the mass slaughter of troops by limited numbers of machine guns with interlocking fields of fire—only other new technologies eventually broke that dreadful stalemate. After the end of the cold war, the threat picture finally shifted away from Europe and towards expeditionary warfare, based on carrier-strike, which is air power from the sea, and amphibious capability, which is land power from the sea. Such traditional technologies are still essential for those sorts of campaigns against opponents who are no match for us militarily. Yet against advanced peer opponents armed with hypersonic anti-ship missiles, for example, traditional assets such as surface ships are potentially very vulnerable. As we know, the pendulum has now swung back from countering insurgencies and their sponsors to state-on-state confrontation with major military powers.

As has been pointed out, at the root of our defence dilemma is one inescapable limitation: between 1988 and 2018, defence expenditure halved as a proportion of GDP. The most welcome pledge of an extra £16.4 billion spread over a four-year period should fill a “black hole” in the equipment budget and facilitate investment in critical new areas of technology. What it will not do, sadly, is prevent serious cuts in conventional armed forces. An estimated 2.2% or 2.3% of GDP defence budget is well short of the 3% recommended by Defence Committees past and present, let alone the 4.5% and above regularly allocated during the cold war years. Yet, even if all our dreams came true on the size of the defence budget, we would still be at the mercy of nuclear blackmail and attack if we had not voted in July 2016 to proceed with the renewal of the Trident missile submarine fleet. Given that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), a former Labour leader, and I have debated such matters good-naturedly for more than 20 years and he is up next, let me conclude with reference to the Government’s announcement that they will no longer reduce the total of our nuclear warheads from a maximum of 225 to a maximum of 180 by the mid-2020s. Instead, they will set a new overall ceiling of 260. This is predictably being denounced as a 40% increase; but the cancellation of a reduction is not an increase. Most probably, it is a recognition that advances in anti-ballistic missile technology might tempt an aggressor to think—probably mistakenly—that he could avoid a devastating response. Why, then, raise the theoretical maximum from 225 to 260? The Government have not said so, but my guess is that it is to cover any temporary overlap when the current generation of UK warheads are replaced by their successors. We have always followed a policy of minimum strategic deterrence, and long may we continue to keep ourselves safe by doing so.

Defence and Security Industrial Strategy

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

I should just be clear that we look at every tender on a case-by-case basis, and we look at each company and each competitive situation on a straightforward tender-by-tender basis. I will not go into the details of what the hon. Gentleman stated.

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

I am sure that the Minister knows that friends of defence on both sides of the House wish to campaign for the 3% of GDP, as recommended by successive Defence Committees, to be spent on defence, but to do that, we need accurate figures. Does the Minister accept that the black hole in the defence budget was correctly described as £17 billion? How much of that £17 billion would be met by cuts and cancellations? How much would be topped up by money from the extra £24 billion, and, at the end of the process, how much of the extra £24 billion will be left for new projects?

[Jeremy Quin]

It is interesting to hear that there are colleagues in the House wishing to campaign for 3% of GDP to be spent on defence.

[Dr Lewis]

For a long time.

[Jeremy Quin]

My right hon. Friend says that to a Minister for Defence Procurement who is interested to hear it. I think we have a good settlement this time round. I am sure that he welcomes the extra £24 billion and regards it as a very good step forward for the defence of our country.

I do not recognise the £17 billion number, but there was a black hole—of that there is no doubt; we said that the equipment plan was not affordable. We recognise that there will be programmes as part of the equipment plan that we want to take forward, so within the £24 billion there will be programmes that we were hoping to finance but did not have the money for, including the Type 26s and the Type 31s. The equipment plan will be published in due course, and my right hon. Friend will be able to get all the details he wishes, and more, from that.

Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Dr Julian Lewis.

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

On the threats from Russia and communist China, will my right hon. Friend acknowledge that conflict in the grey zone is the modern equivalent of the old cold war—in both cases, hostile moves were deliberately kept below the threshold for open warfare? So does he accept that those who warn against cold war containment policies should seriously reflect and reconsider their position?

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 15th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us go to another expert—Dr Julian Lewis.

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

Does my right hon. Friend accept that while the cyber-threat to critical national infrastructure can paralyse a society that is then subject to attack by more conventional means, we also have to maintain the methods and equipment to counter-attack anything involving conventional military force? Is he satisfied that the integrated review, while recognising the role of cyber, also recognises the continuing role of conventional defence?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Quin]

I hope we may have found a technical solution that would enable base-dependent sites to be dealt with to allow sales to social housing providers if the parties agree. Our advice is that the transfer of supply can generally be effected relatively rapidly, and we are willing to share this advice with Annington, which will need to be satisfied that it can perform connections to mains networks safely and efficiently with tenants in situ.

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

It should be possible to restore the pensions of the small cohort of war widows who lost them on remarriage or cohabitation without setting a precedent that would open the floodgates in respect of other cohorts, so what progress is the Department making in addressing this debt of honour?

[Johnny Mercer]

I am aligned with my right hon. Friend’s views. The Secretary of State has worked tirelessly on this issue to try to correct the historic injustice of war widows’ pensions. We continue to examine all possibilities, including the ex gratia scheme and all the other ideas that my right hon. Friend has come up with in his tireless campaigning. We will arrive at a solution. Like I said, the Secretary of State is committed to resolving it, and we will get there in the end.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

I pay tribute to Tony and to many like him across the country who work tirelessly in the endeavour of veterans’ care. I am clear that the future of veterans’ care is a blended model between statutory and voluntary provision, where there is a role for everybody, and we mark ourselves by the key questions: “How do you access that care? Does everyone leaving who needs it know where to turn?” Until we get there, we continue to need people such as Tony. It is a team effort, and we will get there in the end.

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

Part of the armed forces covenant is, of course, to look after war widows, including an estimated 265 who lost their war widow’s pension on cohabitation or remarriage and have not been able to benefit from the change in the law preventing that from happening in the future. I know that the Minister and the Secretary of State personally have been fighting with the Treasury to find a way to settle this debt of honour. In the light of the latest knock-back, what further plans do Ministers have to try to make good their promise to look after those war widows, who have sacrificed so much?

Covid-19 Response: Defence Support

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I have not had numerous discussions with my Scottish counterparts because I took the decision at the beginning of this outbreak to devolve my authority and the asset to the professionals whom we have embedded in both local authorities and Ministries in the devolved Administrations so that they can just get on with their jobs uninterrupted. My military planners are sitting in Scotland with the Scottish Government and with the NHS, and the only barrier to them being used more is whether the Scottish Government choose to use the assets that are available. It is entirely up to the First Minister of Scotland whether she wishes to use more British military assets. I do not get in the way of it and I do not need phone calls with her; she has those people at her disposal. If the hon. Lady would like us to do more—she said a few months ago on Twitter that we should do more—I would suggest she raises it with the First Minister of Scotland.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con) [V]]

Although our service personnel are already making a fine contribution, has my right hon. Friend examined which aspects of Israel’s efficient and highly successful vaccination programme involving her armed forces might be applicable to our own use of military medical resources?