Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I repeat that the freedom of information request did not drag information out of us; we put the answer on the Ministry of Defence website, and we will do the same with any further requests. We have answered questions in the House from hon. Members, including the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson). If questions are tabled, we will answer them. But it has been standard practice for some time not to publicise the placing of embeds in other countries’ forces because, as I have said, those are their forces and their operations. It is for them to publicise them, not us. However, if we are asked to give details, we of course do so.

The hon. Gentleman rightly drew attention to the loss of life in Tunisia, which included Billy and Lisa Graham and James and Ann McGuire from Scotland, so I hope that he will also see, from the Scottish nationalists’ point of view, the need for us to combat ISIL at its source. He asked about the Prevent programme. The Prime Minister has today given more details of the programme, which we are intensifying. The hon. Gentleman asked where the military strategy fits in. As I have described to the House, the military campaign is only one component of the overall effort against ISIL.

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

At home, may I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s speech today, which reflects a counter-radicalisation strategy of precisely the sort that was recommended to his extremism taskforce approximately two years ago? Abroad, however, and particularly in Syria, it appears from the Secretary of State’s statement today that he still thinks it is possible to bring down Daesh without promoting, as it were, the Assad regime, or to bring down the Assad regime without promoting Daesh. The reality is that he has got to face up to one or the other, and until we know which he regards as the lesser of two evils, it is not true to say that we have a coherent strategy for Syria.

[Michael Fallon]

I do not wholly agree with my right hon. Friend. The fact is that none of us wants to see the Assad regime last a day longer than is necessary, but the regime has lost control of the part of northern Syria where ISIL is headquartered and from where its influence has spread. Tackling ISIL in northern Syria—tackling its command and control centres and interdicting its supply routes into Iraq—can be done in a way that does not prop up the regime, which was rightly the concern of the House when we last debated these matters. Of course, August 2013 was before the rise of ISIL right across Iraq and Syria, before the murder of British hostages there and before the slaughter we saw in Tunisia a few weeks ago.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Defence Committee, Dr Julian Lewis.

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

Will the Secretary of State confirm that there is no question of ordering fewer than 13 Type 26 frigates? How much would we fall short of spending 2% of GDP on defence if we did not include items of expenditure normally borne on the budgets of other Government Departments?

[Michael Fallon]

As I have made clear, it is ultimately for NATO to classify from each member’s return what properly counts as defence expenditure in the table that is published each year. As far as the Type 26 programme is concerned, my right hon. Friend will know that we have already committed nearly £1 billion to the design phase and to the purchase of some of the long-lead items for the first three frigates in the series.

Britain and International Security

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I will give way in a moment.

As the Prime Minister said on Monday, there must be a full-spectrum response to deal with ISIL at its source in places such as Syria, Iraq and Libya. We know that ISIL is organised and directed from northern Syria. That is why the Prime Minister said during last September’s debate on taking military action in Iraq that

“there is a strong case for us to do more in Syria”.—[Official Report, 26 September 2014; Vol. 585, c. 1259.]

However, he recognised the reservations that some Members had, and we will not bring a motion to the House on which there is not some consensus. However, this is a new Parliament and it is for all Members to consider carefully how best to tackle ISIL, an evil caliphate that does not respect state boundaries.

Therefore, our position remains that we would return to the House for approval before conducting air strikes in Syria. The exception, as the House knows, is if a critical British national interest was at stake, or if there was the need to act to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. We are also clear that any action we take must not provide any succour to Assad or his regime.

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

In 2013, the Government wanted to remove Assad without helping al-Qaeda or similar groups that later became Daesh. Now we apparently want to remove Daesh but without helping Assad. Those two things are incompatible. It is a choice of two evils. Which does my right hon. Friend think is the lesser of those two evils?

[Michael Fallon]

We do not want to give any succour to Assad. I do not think that anybody in this House wants the Assad regime to continue for a day longer than is necessary; we want Assad to go. But we are equally clear that ISIL operations in Iraq and elsewhere, probably including Libya, are being directed from northern Syria. We already have American air strikes being carried out in northern Syria and air strikes being carried out from other Gulf countries. We have air strikes being carried out by Canadian aircraft that are helping to keep our streets safe as well.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It has been touching to receive so many messages of congratulations on my becoming Chair of the Defence Committee. It is a great responsibility and I will endeavour to live up to it. I pay tribute to the work of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), for the reports he produced in short order, some of which were slightly overshadowed by the advent of the election campaign and deserve further scrutiny. There was a lot of very interesting material in them.

If I may, I will begin by addressing the excellent interventions made by the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) relating to questions of terminology. In that connection, I pay tribute in his absence to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) for his achievement. He attracted support from every part of the House—he gathered 125 right hon. and hon. Members’ signatures—and petitioned the BBC to stop playing the propaganda game of Daesh and to describe it correctly.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I am a former member of the Defence Committee. The right hon. Gentleman will recall a report from back in January that mentions the word “Daesh”. The Committee was ahead of its time.

[Dr Lewis]

I hope to be able to continue that degree of far-sightedness in future.

[Mr James Gray]

I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend to make such a tiny point. It is most kind of him to describe me as “gallant”, but I was only ever a private soldier in the Territorial Army. Surrounded as I am by brave soldiers who truly deserve the title, I should say that I am not in any shape, size or form “gallant”.

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend is, in my eyes, as gallant as they come.

In my hon. Friend’s intervention, he drew attention—he was kind enough to give me the copy of the news article to which he referred—to what the head of the BBC had said. According to today’s edition of The Times:

“The head of the BBC has refused demands from 120 MPs to drop the term Islamic State on the ground that its coverage of the terrorist group must be impartial. Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the director-general, warned that an alternative name for the militants was ‘pejorative’ and said that the broadcaster needed to ‘preserve the BBC’s impartiality’.”

I have news for Lord Hall. I am well familiar with the concept of impartiality that applies to the BBC and independent television. I used to look into it decades ago. It is not absolute impartiality. The example that is always given is that there is no need for the media to be impartial between the arsonist and the fire brigade. The BBC is required to show due impartiality, which does not mean that it has to be impartial between terrorists and constitutionally constituted Governments and their armed forces. Lord Hall would do well to reflect on how he would react if somebody from his ranks of well-paid BBC executives said that the corporation needs to be impartial between the Nazis and the forces that fought them. He would not stand up for that suggestion for a moment.

[Alex Salmond]

Far be it for me to defend the BBC, since it has done so little in Scotland recently to merit defence, but does the right hon. Gentleman not allow that perhaps we should unite across the Chamber in the expression of the term Daesh and the wisdom of using it? Once we do that, we can then reflect on whether the broadcasting organisations would follow, as opposed to just turning this into a bash the BBC session.

[Dr Lewis]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who anticipates the very next point I was going to make. If we use the term Daesh, eventually, with luck, the BBC will be the only organisation left not doing so. At that point, even the BBC might see sense.

I wish to paint a brief picture of the sort of problems we face that lead to the strange paradox that I alluded to when I intervened briefly on the Secretary of State. As I said, two years ago we were proposing to intervene on behalf of one side in a civil war and against the other. Now, it is being proposed that we do exactly the opposite. There are people in the House who are far more expert in these matters than I—

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I seem to recall that the vote was actually not to intervene, but to keep the option of intervention on the menu in negotiations. It was not an option for us to intervene.

[Dr Lewis]

I am afraid I have to disagree with my hon. and gallant Friend. If the vote had been carried, intervention would have taken place the very next weekend. The vote was defeated in this House and the Americans, as a result of that defeat, wisely followed suit, and we did not go down that dangerous road.

As I was starting to say, my interpretation of the situation we face in the world—it may be over-simple, but here it is for what it is worth—is that the western world is being caught up in a terrible recrudescence of the age-old battle between the Shi’as and the Sunnis, a point made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) in an earlier intervention. The complexity is that the Shi’a and the Sunni militants have a selection of powerful allies. On the Shi’a side, the Syrian Government two years ago posed the threat of chemical weapons, and the Iranian regime has the potential to acquire nuclear weapons. As part of that particular little gang, we also see our old friend President Putin, who has been flexing his muscles, in a way that we all strongly condemn, by taking unilateral action in Ukraine.

On the Sunni side, we see al-Qaeda and the Daesh militants. Behind them, we see strong elements at least of ideological support in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Qatar, who are supposed to be our friends and allies. The problem we face is that there are no good outcomes to be had, whatever course of action we take. What we therefore have to do is to choose between, at any one time, and adopt a policy that is the lesser of two evils. What we have to decide at any one time is: which is the greater danger posed by one element or another in those two unlovely collections of hostile regimes and terrorist organisations?

I wish today simply to sow the seed of the idea that, where we cannot get a wonderfully satisfactory outcome, and we know the only outcome we will get is to try to minimise the damage and that that will have to be done over an extended period, we should adopt a policy that stood us in good stead for half a century in relation to Soviet Communist Russia and its empire: the policy of containment. We cannot force countries that are not ready yet for democracy to become democracies at the point of a gun barrel, unless one goes to the same extent as at the end of the second world war when there was the total defeat and occupation of countries at the cost of millions of lives.

The idea of containment is not passive; it is an active containment. I spoke earlier today with Lord West, whom I greatly respect. He combines much knowledge with a great deal of practical common sense, and I consulted him two years ago before going ahead and deciding to vote against the proposed intervention then. I said to him today that I was minded to think that if we intervened on this occasion, we would be intervening in a very different way from the one that was proposed two years ago. We would not be intervening to bring down another dreadful Arab dictator and replace him with another failed state run by Islamist extremist terrorists. His response was interesting. He said it is a policy of deciding, at any one time, which of the crocodiles is swimming nearest to the boat. Of course, there is no way of permanently taking the crocodiles out of the scene and sailing blissfully out of danger. When dangerous organisations and deadly regimes wield their weapons in ways that are most threatening to us, we must constantly, over a period of time, try to contain the threat by active measures.

What we are seeing with Daesh and its activity is new. It requires containment, but it requires active containment. Daesh is seizing large areas of territory. By doing so, it is giving up the one great advantage that insurgencies and terrorist groups generally have: the advantage of invisibility. A policy of active containment will, from time to time, certainly require the step of military intervention to prevent the enemy on that particular side of the two-sided threat that I have been trying to describe from becoming over-dominant.

We must not fool ourselves into believing that any steps we take will result in a decisive solution. As the Secretary of State said, we are in this for the long haul. At any given time, we will have to intervene to keep whichever particular set of enemies is becoming too dominant, under control. In a way, that is nothing different from what was traditionally the role of the balance of power, when Britain looked after its national interests by ensuring that no one potential enemy power became overwhelmingly strong on the continent.

That leads me, very briefly, to the question of NATO and European defence. We have seen the concept of article 5—the guarantee whereby NATO ensures that none of its members is attacked without the potential aggressor knowing in advance that, if it does that, it will immediately be at war with all other NATO members—stretched to its limit. We have a long and honourable tradition of supporting the independence of the Baltic states. It goes back at least to the time of our intervention in the Russian civil war in 1919-20. I must say to the House, however, that the decision NATO took to extend its protection to the Baltic states is, realistically, as far as we can go. It is simply not fair to countries further east to hold out the false hope of NATO membership, which, if granted, would be totally incredible. If a potential enemy believes that it is not credible that all NATO members would, in fact, declare war upon the aggressor if there were an attack on one of these eastern states, we will have destroyed the whole foundation and the whole reason for having NATO in the first place. That does not do anyone any favours. It just takes us back to the scenarios of the 1930s, when an aggressor thought that it could pick off one state after another without larger states coming to their rescue.

Finally, I want to say this. The Government keep saying that defence is the first duty of Government. I agree: it is the first duty of Government. It is more important than any other duty of Government. If that is the case, there can be no coherent or rational case for safeguarding and ring-fencing the budgets of other Government Departments, thus increasing the pressure on the unprotected Departments, which include Defence. Something has gone awry with the Government’s sense of defence as the top national priority. We constantly hear talk about Britain punching above its weight, but in reality, the weight of the punch depends on the resources allocated to the armed forces. The stronger the armed forces in peacetime, the more likely it is that we will not have to engage in warfare, because anyone who is likely to attack us will be forced to think again.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

The purpose of the alliance is to defend its members. That is why our troops were exercising last week in Estonia and will shortly be exercising in Romania and the Baltic sea, and why our Typhoons are flying with the Norwegians to protect the skies over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the face of Russian aggression. We are one of the nuclear members of the NATO alliance, and that nuclear shield helps to protect all members of the alliance.

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

When the Secretary of State is next having a word in the shell-like ear of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will he mention that it does not make a lot of sense for any Government to say that defence is the first duty of Government if they protect other Departments’ spending but not defence spending?

[Michael Fallon]

I know of my right hon. Friend’s long-standing commitment to defence and to defence expenditure. He is right, of course, that the first duty of Government is to defend our country and our people. I reminded him earlier of the commitments in the manifesto to protect the size and power of our armed forces right through this Parliament. However, I note what he has said. Those commitments are for the remaining three financial years, from 2016-17 onwards. These are matters for negotiation in the autumn.

HM Naval Base Clyde

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alex Salmond]

That would not be first time that a Speaker has intervened on me in this House, Mr Speaker—[Laughter]. But always helpfully.

On 25 March this year, the Secretary of State for Defence, in a written statement, explained the decisions that had been taken on precautions following the discovery of the breaches in the cladding around one of the fuel cells at the shore test facility at Dounreay. For Members of the House who are unfamiliar with this, let me say that that has been a matter of concern for some considerable time. The breaches in the fuel cell cladding have led to the refuelling already of one of the Trident submarines and to the potential refuelling of a second one in the near future.

The prototype reactor is designed and operated at extensive level to test whether in future there might be breaches in the reactor on board the submarines. There are two aspects that should give the House considerable cause for concern. First, we have been assured by the current Secretary of State for Defence and his predecessor that when this has happened, all appropriate authorities have been informed and kept up to date with the consequences of these microscopic breaches, but I submit that the process of consultation and information is severely inadequate.

The responsible democratic body is the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, but despite the fact that SEPA was informed by the MOD within a reasonable timescale, but not immediately, it was years before the general public and this House were informed. Hon. Members may well ask why SEPA, a democratic agency reporting to Scottish Ministers, did not immediately and timeously release information, as it would in a civil nuclear incident affecting the environment. The reason is that the MOD invoked Crown immunity regarding the control and flow of information from the test reactor. I submit—I hope the Minister will reply specifically on this point—that we are past the stage where it is acceptable that the invocation of Crown immunity can conceal from the general public, for months and perhaps even years, nuclear incidents that may have a bearing on the safe operation of nuclear reactors in the Faslane base.

Secondly, the microscopic breaches in the reactor in Dounreay have resulted in that reactor being closed down. It is to be decommissioned in the next few years. That seems to me to be sensible when radiation leaks have been identified.

The difficulty in the matter which concerns this House is that that position has led to an examination of whether there should be a prototype reactor on the new generation of nuclear submarines. The conclusion that was reached and that was in the statement of the Secretary of State for Defence this year was that his expert panel concluded that it was a valid decision not to prototype PWR3 because there was no practical course of action that would enable a prototype facility to be built ahead of the first successor submarine.

It is bad enough that a prototype reactor is giving a signal of potential problems in a nuclear fleet, and that the Secretary of State for Defence did not timeously inform the general public of what was going on or allow the Scottish Environment Protection Agency to do its duty. That is bad enough, but to come to the conclusion that we might move to a maingate decision on renewing this nuclear deterrent without having a functioning prototype reactor which would tell us of potential problems in the new reactor is an extraordinary situation which must be inherently unsafe, unless the Minister has some information that the new reactor will be built in such a way that it does not have the failings of just about every other nuclear reactor built in recent history.

Lastly, I spoke of the new political reality in Scotland and the 57 out of 59 Members who were clearly elected as being against any decision to renew the nuclear deterrent at extraordinary cost at a time of austerity. The attitude of 57 out of 59 Members of Parliament from Scotland to next year’s maingate decision will be to oppose it. That should give the Minister substantial cause for thought.

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

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman back to his place in this House. May I appeal to him not to conflate two separate issues? They are indeed separate issues. One is the very real concerns about faulty operating practices leading to potential accidents. The other is the wider issue about whether or not we should have a nuclear deterrent. It might surprise him to know that many of us who believe that we should have a nuclear deterrent are as concerned as he is about the dangers of operating faults and accidents in the systems that we have.

[Alex Salmond]

These Members will conclude that, unfortunately, one of the consequences of having such a nuclear deterrent is having these systems in a situation which causes inherent danger. The point that I am making is that the working of the system is inherently dangerous because a nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons on a submarine are not an easy fit. The military value of this deterrent as an independent deterrent is non-existent. Its use would break international law. It is not a weapon of security, but a sign of the insecurity of the United Kingdom, believing that fading grandeur can be protected by being one of the big five in having possession of nuclear weapons.

If my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute is lucky enough to catch the Speaker’s eye in a minute or so, he will be, as far as I can check from the House of Commons records, the first hon. Member of this House ever to make two substantive speeches on the first two sessional days—an extraordinary occurrence which even the greatest of parliamentarians through history have not achieved. Such will be the activity of my hon. Friend.

With that in mind, perhaps the Minister will allow me to paraphrase one of the great parliamentarians of the past. Given the political realities in Scotland, she and the Government will be making a fatal mistake if they believe that this costly trumpery, this useless, expensive, unlawful and inherently dangerous military plaything will be tolerated any longer by those on the SNP Benches, by this party or by our country.

Falkland Islands Defence Review

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am sure that Governments across the region have noted the results of the recent referendum in the Falkland Islands, and that they would respect the right of the Falkland islanders to determine their future. We do have discussions with other Governments in southern and Latin America. I very recently met the Foreign Minister of Brazil, and I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that this subject did not come up.

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

The size of the Royal Navy has greatly diminished since 1982. Does the Secretary of State agree that countries such as Russia and Argentina tend to respond to the signals we send them? Would it not send a terrible signal to the Argentine Government if we failed to give a commitment to continue to spend at least the NATO-recommended minimum of 2% of GDP on defence throughout the lifetime of the next Parliament?

[Michael Fallon]

I hope the signal that will go out from the House today—from both sides of the House—will be the signal to the islanders themselves that this Government are determined to ensure their defence for the short, medium and long term, and will always protect their right to determine their future.

My right hon. Friend drew attention to the smaller number of ships. He will of course be aware that the ships we have today are much more powerful than some of the earlier platforms. He will know that we are constructing two new aircraft carriers and building altogether seven new hunter-killer submarines, and that the Prime Minister has recently announced the next phase of the construction of the Type 26 frigate fleet on the Clyde.

Defence Spending

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

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

In endorsing that important point, may I point out that, during the cold war in the 1980s, we were spending, at times, more than 5% of GDP on defence?

[Mark Hendrick]

I was not aware of that fact, but I totally concur with the idea of spending anything up to 5%. As I said, 2% should be considered the floor. I am very concerned that some of our NATO and European partners are not getting anywhere near that figure. How can it be argued that we should shut our doors to Europe and, at the same time, commit to working closer with European nations if we cannot work together to reach at least that 2% figure?

The recent report by the Royal United Services Institute says that the strength of our Army, Navy and Air Force could fall from 145,000 to 115,000 by 2020, which is a 26% decline. If we follow that trajectory, we could face a situation in which our armed forces numbers drop below 100,000. If we consider that Wembley stadium can accommodate 90,000 people, our entire armed forces might soon be able to fit into the stadium, which does not bear thinking about. There are also around 92,000 people currently in prison in Britain. We could well end up with more people incarcerated than in our armed forces.

This country has always had a powerful air force. We have always built and supplied the best military aircraft in the world, from the Harrier to the Typhoon. Yet air support today accounts for only £13.8 billion of our £162.9 billion defence budget, which is 8.8%. The numbers of RAF servicemen have been continually cut over the past few years. There are 8,810 fewer servicemen in the RAF in 2015 than there were in 2010, which is a decline of nearly 25%. That is despite the fact that limited military intervention via the deployment of aircraft for bombing campaigns has once again become the norm. We saw that in Libya and we now see it in Iraq where Tornadoes and Reaper drones have flown 374 missions and released 206 weapons against ISIL targets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

I enjoyed listening to the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). It is 32 years since I first came to the House and made my maiden speech on defence and this is probably the last speech that I will make in the Chamber, but during those 32 years, I have never agreed with a word that he has ever said. None the less, I enjoy listening to him.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I cannot resist pointing out that the second name on the motion today, which is

“That this House believes that defence spending should be set to a minimum of two per cent of GDP in accordance with the UK’s NATO commitment,”

is indeed that of the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn).

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

Perhaps I can start again.

What is behind this debate, I think, is a fear of cuts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who is a valued member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, on bringing this debate. I agree with much of what he said during his opening remarks, except for the points that he made about intervention. It is a debate that we have had in the Foreign Affairs Committee and our latest report on the finances of the Foreign Office makes the point that the Foreign Office, like the defence budget, is at a crossroads. We have such a thinly spread diplomatic service around the world that either it needs to have more resources or it has to narrow its bandwidth and match its aspirations to the budget available.

Linking a percentage of GDP to any policy is, in my view, bad politics. It is not the way to run Government, and that applies equally to the aid budget and the defence budget. Economies go up, economies come down. Of course, we are not going to have the defence and aid budgets going up and down like a yoyo. These things have to be evened out over an economic cycle. As many colleagues have said, the defence budget has to match our requirements. We must look at it in the context of the threat. What is the threat to the United Kingdom?

I do not think anyone is arguing at present that there is any serious existential threat to the United Kingdom. If there were, the figure on the motion today would be 20%, not 2%. We can safely say that NATO and the EU have given us the longest period of peace for centuries. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) said very effectively on the “Today” programme today, we cannot ignore the impact and the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Not for the first time, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) has done the House and the country a service by bringing to the Chamber a matter that the coalition Government might perhaps have preferred he had let lie. I believe it is his intention, if we do not get the assurances we want from both Front Benches, to give the House the opportunity to put its opinion on the record by dividing. If the Whips did not know that, they had better get busy.

One of the advantages of speaking last from the Back Benches in such a debate is that I do not have to repeat all the points made by everybody else. This has been particularly worthwhile today because I could not have made a stronger strategic case than the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee made in his excellent speech, and I could not have made a stronger economic case than was forcefully made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). I pay tribute to him for his outstanding service to this country, both in high office and, more recently, as Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which I have had the pleasure of serving on throughout this Parliament.

Any suggestion that the budget spent on the intelligence agencies should be redefined as defence to edge us closer to the 2% minimum would be not only outrageous, but dishonest, because we would no longer be comparing like with like. Let us compare like with like. It came as a surprise to the hon. Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick), who made a thoughtful speech, when I pointed out to him that at the height of the second cold war, in the 1980s, this country was spending more than 5% of GDP on defence. I know the economy has got bigger, but defence has got more expensive, so that excuse will not do.

Let me put on the record that between 1982 and 1986, the amount spent on defence varied from 5.1% of GDP to 5.3%. From 1986 to 1990, as a result of perestroika, the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty and other measures, the figure gradually declined from a maximum of 4.8% to 4%. When we took the peace dividend, following the break-up of the Soviet Union—in other words, in the first five years of the 1990s—the figures were 3.6%, 3.6%, 3.5%, 3.3% and 3.1%.

When Labour came into office in 1997, the figure was 2.5%, and it remained, as Tony Blair said and as I have quoted here before, roughly constant at 2.5% for a decade, although that hid the fact that the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq, which should have been met from the Treasury reserve, were being included in the overall calculation. Even as late as the coalition coming in, in 2009-10, the figure was 2.5%, and it remained the same in 2010-11. It went down to 2.4% in 2011-12 and since 2012 it has been 2.2% and 2.1%. Frankly, I regard it as a disgrace that defence spending has declined even to that level, and I will be far from satisfied if—without redefining things—we spend only 2% of GDP on defence in the future.

I have to ask myself why, at a time when we have not only the threat from international terrorism to deal with, but a re-emerging threat from a newly aggressive and revanchist Russia, politicians are calling into question even the basic NATO minimum of 2%. The only answer I get has nothing to do with grand strategy and everything to do with low politics. This is the politics of the pollsters who are trying to tell my Prime Minister that there are no votes in defence.

My mind goes back to a conversation I had in Conservative central office with the then general director of campaigning of the Conservative party in about 1985. When I said that we needed to focus on Labour’s defence policy at the next general election, he said, “Well, just because nuclear weapons and defence policy was a big issue in 1983, it does not mean that it will be a big issue in 1987.” My response was, “Of course it will not be a big issue unless we make it a big issue.” Of course, if we poll people at the moment and ask them how high defence is in their sense of priorities, we will not get much of a reaction. Believe me, however, things would be different if we went into the election campaign fighting hard to explain to people the dangers that threaten us and the terrible signal it would send to Vladimir Putin if we, having exhorted everybody else in NATO to meet the 2% minimum, then fell below it ourselves for the very first time—which would be appalling.

I do not know who is more to blame. I do not know whether it is the American strategist who is advising my Prime Minister or whether it is the British Chancellor who is advising him, but I like to think that my Prime Minister has more sense than to fall for it. Let me put it in “low” political terms: if the Prime Minister is worried about the UK Independence party taking a chunk of the Conservative vote, he should bear it in mind that even UKIP has made the gesture—it is only a gesture on its part—that it would support the 2% minimum. If the Prime Minister is worried about losing votes to UKIP, he had better match its pledge.

We have had a pledge from UKIP. We have had a pledge—a very important pledge—from the Democratic Unionist party today. We need a pledge from the official Opposition, and we need a pledge from the Government. Otherwise, in the words of an excellent editorial that appeared in The Times yesterday, we shall be practising nothing short of “a false economy”, along with a dangerous delusion about the action that we need to take when doing our duty for this country.

Defence and Security Review (NATO)

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I should like to begin by talking about the House of Commons Defence Committee’s report. The key element in the report, and in what I hope will be my relatively brief remarks, is that Russia poses a significant and substantial threat to Europe. That argument has been made in great detail by the Defence Committee and, in the months since the report was published, it has become increasingly evident that it is correct.

I remind the House that, while we were working on the report, we had a statement from the Foreign Secretary that he had been assured by Lavrov that Russia would not invade Crimea. Four days later, Russia invaded Crimea. We then heard a number of specialists and analysts say that Russia would not go into eastern Ukraine, but it then did so. We also heard people say, after the Malaysian airliner was shot down, that that would be the moment at which Russia would back off because it was embarrassed by what it had done. Russia did not back off. People then made it clear that Russia would not extend its activities to Mariupol or Odessa, but as we can now see, separatists with Russian support are moving towards those two cities.

What does this mean for the United Kingdom, the Ministry of Defence, NATO and defence spending? The House of Commons Defence Committee’s report focuses on two things: the conventional threat posed by Russia, and the threat that we describe as next generation warfare, ambiguous warfare or the asymmetric threat posed by Russia. Although those two things are related, it is worth analysing them separately.

On the conventional threat posed by Russia, the report argues that, through its Zapad exercise in 2013, Russia showed its ability to deploy almost 70,000 troops at 72 hours’ notice. The current estimate is that it would take NATO almost six months to deploy that number of troops. Russia has also displayed its ability to fly nuclear bombers to Venezuela and to exercise for a full amphibious assault on a Baltic state. It has upgraded its nuclear arsenal and it is committed to spending $100 billion a year on defence. All of that is taking place in the context of a decline in NATO defence spending.

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

I thank the Chairman of the Committee for giving way so early in his speech. One of the reasons that he has had to consider only two aspects—namely, conventional and unconventional warfare—is that our strategic nuclear deterrent is still in place, and if either the Opposition or the Conservative party has anything to do with it, that will remain the case. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be madness to think about disposing of our deterrent and ending our continuous at-sea deterrence? Is it not strange that there is not a single Member present who represents the party that proposes that we should abandon that continuous at-sea deterrence—namely, the Liberal Democrat party? [Interruption.] Oh, the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) has just appeared. I hope that he disagrees with his party on that matter.

[Rory Stewart]

That is an invitation to go into exactly this theme: in terms of responses to the Russian conventional threat, we have planned, for 20 years, for fighting enemies in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. We have planned on the basis of such expeditionary warfare. The planning assumptions at the base of Future Force 2020 or the strategic defence and security review were about being able to put 6,600 people—or 10,000, in the past—into the field and maintain them there for enduring stability operations. We have not really thought about taking on an enemy such as Russia. In the national security strategy, the threat of what we have seen done by Russia was marked down as a tier 3 or bottom-level probability.

That means a lot of things: it has implications, of course, for nuclear weapons; it has implications for many capacities that we have got rid of in Britain over the past 20 years, such as our ability to exercise at scale —in the mid-1980s we used to be able to exercise with 130,000 or 140,000 people, whereas last year we were exercising with about 6,600 people, at a time when Russia was exercising with about 70,000; it has meant that we got rid of our significant capacity in wide-water crossing—that is engineering; it has meant a reduction in armour, because we did not expect to be fighting tank battles; and, more relevantly to the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), it has also meant that we need to think much more seriously about ballistic missile defence, and about chemical, biological and radiological and nuclear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

I would always like greater attention to be given to the Parliamentary Assembly’s work, but there is a good crossover of membership between our UK delegation to the Assembly and the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Select Committee on Defence and the Select Committee on International Development. As a result, there is a cross-fertilisation of ideas and I know that colleagues on the Defence and Foreign Affairs Committees who are alerted to particular information through the NATO Parliamentary Assembly meetings have been able to take that information to their Select Committees. There is, of course, movement of information in the other direction, which is a thoroughly good thing.

We need to consider not just how we deliver a very high readiness joint taskforce but how to improve our strategy for dealing with cyber-threats, our response to the propaganda war when it is waged against us and our response to the use of irregular personnel, whether that means little green men or jihadists in the middle east. We must be clear that if we and our allies are going to develop new capabilities and strategies, that will cost money. If we want to improve our defence, we must will the means to do so.

Before the NATO summit last September, the Prime Minister quite rightly called on the majority of our NATO allies who do not spend 2% of their GDP on defence to do so. At the summit, as one can read on page 10 of the Government’s response to the report:

“All Allies agreed to halt any decline in Defence spending, aim to increase it in real terms as GDP grows and to move towards 2% within a decade.”

Some of our allies have responded to that declaration since the summit. Poland agreed on 18 February to increase its defence spending to 2% of GDP by 2016. Romania, through a pact signed between the political parties on 13 January, pledged to reach 2% by 2017. The Czech Republic, while not making a pledge to reach 2%, has pledged to increase its spending from 1% to 1.4% by 2020. Lithuania has pledged to meet 2% by 2017 and Latvia by 2020. Estonia, which is already at 2%, has increased its defence spending slightly to 2.05% this year. Overall, however, western European allies are still cutting their defence expenditure, on average by 2% a year since 2009 according to Jane’s defence budgets global defence assessment. Last year, in 2014, Germany cut its defence spending by 3.9% and we in the UK cut ours by 2.3%. France cut its by 0.8%. Meanwhile, Russia has been increasing its defence spending by some 10% a year for the past five years, a 50% increase. We ought to question why we did not pick that up sooner. No one increases their defence spending by 50% unless they have some plan to use those assets.

We should also look closely at UK defence spending. According to the public expenditure statistical analysis produced by the Government in 2014, at table 4.2, in the year I entered the House, 1992-93, defence spending was £23.8 billion or 3.5% of our GDP. By 1997-98, when there was a change of Government, of course, defence spending had fallen in cash terms to £21.7 billion, and by more in real terms. At that point, it was down to 2.5% of GDP. Throughout the period of the previous Labour Government, defence spending remained at 2.5%. The Ministry of Defence’s statistical analysis shows an increase, but if we remove the increased spending on operations it remained at 2.5%.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

In his last few words, the hon. Gentleman said something that contradicted my memory of events. The point I wanted to make to him was it was often said, particularly by Tony Blair on leaving, that under the previous Labour Government spending had remained roughly constant at 2.5%, if the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq were included. In opposition, we used to criticise that, as we said that it was sleight of hand, so the hon. Gentleman can imagine my embarrassment now that we are in government to find that there is no sign of our sticking to the pledge when we criticised the Labour party in government for massaging the figures.

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

I have had an interesting conversation with the statisticians in the House of Commons Library this afternoon. They provided figures for me in April of last year that showed spending as a proportion of GDP increasing from 2.48% in 1997-98 to 2.81% in 2009-10. Those are the Defence Analytical Services and Advice, or DASA, figures produced by the Minister of Defence. More recently—[Interruption.] I shall come to the point made by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) in a moment. More recently, the Library has given me the PESA, or public expenditure statistical analysis, figures, which show defence spending at 2.5% at the start of the Labour Government and 2.5% at the end of the Labour Government. I think the difference in the figures is covered by precisely the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. If we include the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq, there is an increase in real terms. If we discount them, there is no change in real terms.

In 2013-14, according to the Government’s figures, spending was at 2.1%. That is counterintuitive. I do not think that many members of the public would recognise that the Major Conservative Government substantially reduced defence expenditure in real terms, that the Labour Government maintained it and that this Government have substantially reduced it, but that is what the Government’s own PESA figures show us.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Woodcock]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s honesty when he says that that is the more important question. Of course this Government are on their last legs and will soon be replaced. Suffice it to say that when a Labour Government take office, I shall be as vociferous in calling for the defence uplift as I am at present.

In debates on the strategic deterrent, people who have long wished the UK to scrap its nuclear weapons came up with a line that had a certain ring to it a little while ago—the cold war is over; who are we supposed to be protecting ourselves against? The rise of Putin has proved what folly that policy would have been, had the Labour Government followed it and not done as they did, which was to set in train the programme of renewal of our deterrent submarines. There is a strong argument that if we are not already in a situation of renewed cold war, a cold war is the most optimistic outcome in the current environment, such is the level of aggression being shown by President Putin. If we do not step up and re-engage with his current activities, the alternative is a full-blown war on Europe’s borders or potentially even within the European Union. We have to wake up to that.

There are clear reports that part of the increase in defence investment in Russia is going into the secret cities which some time ago people reported were at only 50% capacity. They are now running at full capacity to upgrade Russia’s nuclear threat. The idea that we should do anything other than keep to the current programme of renewal of our deterrent submarines would be madness in these circumstances.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman knows that he and I are as one on the question of the future of the deterrent. He also knows that if there were a Labour Government pure and simple, or a Conservative Government pure and simple, the future of the nuclear deterrent would be assured. How confident is he that if the Scottish nationalists held the balance of power and offered the keys of No. 10 to the leader of his party, his party would say no rather than abandon the nuclear deterrent?

[John Woodcock]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman asked me that. I am completely confident. It is a shame that not a single MP from the Scottish National party has bothered to turn up to the debate. It gives the lie to the idea that they care about the future of our country’s defences.

I am absolutely confident about that. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we were the ones who took the difficult but necessary decision to start the programme of renewal, we have remained committed to it throughout our time in opposition, and we will finish it if we are elected to government. In the words of the soon-to-return Member, Alex Salmond, it would be unpardonable folly for either side to listen to the minor parties. We will not compromise the future security of our nation. They may ask, but the answer from our side will be no. I know that if the hon. Gentleman has breath left in his body, the answer on his side will be no as well.

The Defence Minister has been worried, I know, and his boss, the Secretary of State, has also been worried about some remarks made by the Leader of the Opposition in a question and answer session, when he said that the Labour party wanted the cheapest form of deterrent. That seemed to get to the Minister. He thought that “cheapest” meant something different from “minimum” and he has asked repeatedly about this. I want to set his mind at rest if I can.

I have the words of the Leader of the Opposition at a similar question and answer session—he does lots of those. Just in case the Conservatives did not send one of their secret scribblers with their Dictaphones to the event, I want to read out what the leader of my party said on 15 January this year at a question and answer session in London, so that it is on the record. He said:

“Personally, because you asked about nuclear weapons, I want the minimum deterrent that will keep us safe.

We’ve always been a nuclear power. We are recognised as such in the non-proliferation treaty.

From what I’ve seen the best answer to that is the replacement of Trident.

Other people have said that there are other alternatives, but when they have looked at those alternatives actually they haven’t come up with better or more cost effective alternatives.”

There you have it. I can set the Minister’s mind at rest. There is a settled consensus on the issue. We are now down to the detail of the programme.

Admiral Lord West in the other place raised important issues about the potential slowing of the drumbeat of the Astute programme in Barrow shipyard. I hope that when the Minister replies, he can reassure the House that it is not his Government’s plan to stretch out the Astute programme to such an extent that the seventh boat is no longer necessary. We have reduced our nuclear submarine fleet from 14 attack submarines right the way down to six. That seventh submarine is important, particularly in an environment where Russia is increasing its activity and its investment.

The Minister knows, and I hope he will be good enough to confirm, that because of the delay in the programme as a result of the pretty shoddy deal that he did with his coalition partners to delay main gate until 2016 and to slow down the programme of building an enormously complex enterprise—the first new deterrent submarines that this country has had for decades—there is now precious little contingency in that programme. The delay imposed by both coalition partners at the beginning of this Government will not be available this time. Main gate needs to happen in 2016. I hope the Minister can confirm that he recognises that, and that he will stick to the timetable that he set out and not delay it once again.

On the submarine programme and the renewal of the UK’s deterrent, an intervention from the Liberal Democrats, which we thought unhelpful at the time, has turned out to be very helpful. Now that they have explored their own options using taxpayers’ money and found them to be complete nonsense, we have understood that we are faced with a binary choice: we continue with this investment at a time of renewed aggression from our old adversary such as we have not seen for many years, or we abandon it. Labour Members will continue the programme that we started, and I hope that those on the Government Benches will do likewise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt]

I—

[Dr Julian Lewis]

May I say to my hon. and gallant Friend that it is no good contrasting the building of the Successor-class submarines with the Astute-class submarines, because if we do not build the Successor submarines—I am not saying that that is a reason to have a deterrent when we otherwise would not have one—there will be a huge gap between the ending of the Astute hunter-killer programme and the next hunter-killer programme, in which all skill in building submarines will be lost?

[Crispin Blunt]

That is the point I wish to address. We will invest an enormous amount in one weapon system for one task only. If we choose to invest in a free-fall bomb and 48 strike attack aircraft in order to deliver that bomb, it would at least put doubt in the mind of our opponent because we would have a capability that we can deliver in extremis. Although we would not have the total protection that a submarine launch system would give us, it would be enough. When it comes with the potential to have five additional Astute-class submarines, four additional Type-26 frigates, six airborne warning and control systems and eight long-range maritime patrol aircraft, we should think about the capability that we will not have if we commit to Trident. If we have a deterrent that is suitable for the future role of the United Kingdom, we will ensure that we have some of the conventional capability that will be absolutely necessary.

There was a very good piece in The Times on Saturday by Matthew Parris. His chilling conclusion, with which I agree, is that we must now prepare seriously for war. We have not been in this position or seen the scale of engagement that will be required since the cold war, so 2% does not cut it. Mis-investing our limited resources, as we will be doing if we keep the deterrent in the way that is proposed, does not cut it. If we are going to put our soldiers into action, there has to be certainty that they will be properly equipped, capable of acting and capable of doing so in collaboration with our NATO partners. That is why the recommendations of the Defence Committee about forward basing and looking again at something like the Allied Command Europe mobile force must be looked at by the Government. I am afraid to say that the resources that we are putting towards our strategy are simply not enough.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is always the peril for the last ship in the convoy that it is the most likely to be torpedoed. As the last ship in the Back-Bench convoy in this debate, I shall resist the temptation to be diverted from holding on to my strategic aim—even though I am sorely tempted by the contribution of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) to use up the entire remaining eight-and-a-half minutes talking about Trident. Instead, as an effort in intellectual discipline I shall keep that subject to last to see whether I can get through the other items on the agenda, which are three: the question of process; the question of resources; and the question of content.

First, on the question of process in relation to the strategic defence and security review that is due in 2015, why should it be in 2015, how long should it take and who should do it? We have two recent examples of strategic defence reviews: one in 1998 and one in 2010. The one in 1998 was strategic but unfunded. The one in 2010 was funded but unstrategic. We do not need another unstrategic review, but that is what we will get if we rush the process. Something that the Labour Government were very right to do when they came into office in 1997 —I am delighted to see my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), a former Defence Minister, agreeing with this point—was to take about 18 months to draw up the strategic defence review, as it was then called; and they did it comprehensively and inclusively. There was nobody with something worth contributing to the process that led to the review who was not given an opportunity to do so, and we should do that next time too.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Can my hon. Friend recall whether on that occasion the Treasury intervened and tried to trump what the review sought to achieve?

[Dr Lewis]

I am doubly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for asking a question that I cannot possibly answer, having been in opposition at the time, because it gives me extra time and allows me to direct him to the shadow Minister, who I am sure will be able to answer it when he sums up.

The next question is who should do the strategic defence and security review? I must say that I disagree with my hon. and very learned Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson)—“learned” in the academic sense of that word—when he paints a picture of how wonderful the process of the National Security Council and the national security strategy is. Frankly, I am not impressed with it. I thought that the strategy document itself was apple pie and motherhood. I did not see much in it other than a ranking of tiered threats, most of which were fairly obvious, and those that were not may well turn out, in relation to state-against-state conflict being ranked in the third tier, to be absolutely wrong.

I am concerned about the decision-making process in defence. I will not go into that too much now because, as the Chairman of the Defence Committee, which I have recently had the privilege of joining, is well aware, we are about to produce a report on that very subject. Yet I would like to flag up something that I hope will appear in his draft in due course, and it is this: when we are trying to work out a sensible, comprehensive, coherent and well-informed strategy, it is useful to have substantive contributions from Ministers and civil servants, but we also need contributions from the military.

We appear to have dismantled the collective giving of military advice on strategy to politicians by the chiefs of staff, along with the healthy tension between them and the politicians that contributed so much to the outcome of successful campaigns in decades gone by. I am not impressed when we find that the whole burden of giving military advice on strategy to the Government falls on the shoulders of the Chief of the Defence Staff and the immediate chain of people below him, when in fact that used to be the collective responsibility of the heads of the armed services. I am not impressed when we find that the civil service has done away with what has been termed “domain competence” at the highest levels. We can find ourselves, as I do on the Defence Committee, facing a permanent Under-Secretary of State, the head of the Ministry of Defence, with next to no background in defence himself, and hearing him tell us with great pride that the new head of the Army is pleased to look on himself as a chief executive officer for his service. We are not going to get sufficient military input from that sort of configuration. We are getting non-specialist civil servants, we are getting the military insufficiently included in the process, and we are getting politicians flying by the seat of their pants. It is not good enough.

In his own excellent speech, my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Mid Sussex did not have time, I am delighted to say, to refer to an article by Max Hastings which appeared in The Guardian on 8 November 2005. It is headed “Our armed forces must have a voice in how to defend us” and it states:

“strategy in its proper sense—a doctrine for the prevention and prosecution of war—has been allowed to atrophy. Very few people in uniform or out of it, within the Ministry of Defence or beyond it, devote intellect and energy to anything much beyond saving money and getting through today. And those who do so are firmly discouraged from allowing any hint of their ruminations to escape into the public domain, to fuel an intelligent debate.”

Given that the entire strategic role is now devolved on to the shoulders of just the Chief of Defence Staff, it was disturbing to me to read—I do not know whether it is true—that the CDS was instructed by his political masters not to deliver a lecture. If that is true, it is appalling. [Interruption.] I am delighted, again, to have that sedentary endorsement from my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Mid Sussex.

On resources, I am thrilled that there has been such unanimity about recommending us to put forward the NATO minimum contribution of 2% of GDP for defence. Can hon. Members imagine anything worse than signalling to a powerful adversary that we are going to send 75 military personnel as advisers into a non-NATO country which we are not able and not obliged to defend, much as we sympathise with it, but for the first time since the 2% formula was set, we are in danger of not meeting it ourselves?

[Sir Hugh Bayley]

I am getting slightly tired of Government Members talking up 2% as if it were a great achievement. Five years ago it was 2.5%, so the defence budget has been cut over the past five years by 20%. When Labour came to power it was £22 billion. When we left power, the defence budget in cash terms was £39 billion; now it is £34 billion—a real-terms cut. When are these cuts going to stop?

[Dr Lewis]

I entirely agree with the thrust of that intervention, although as I stated in an intervention on the hon. Gentleman, I well remember Tony Blair saying in, I think, 2007 that over the 10-year period that he had been in office, the defence budget had remained fairly constant at 2.5% of GDP, if the cost of the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan was included. The situation is therefore even worse than the hon. Gentleman thinks, because in effect core defence expenditure also declined under his Government. Nevertheless, the thrust of what he says is on the right lines.

I shall quote very briefly from the Government’s response to the report that the Defence Committee produced before I joined it. The Government replied on 27 October 2014:

“NATO Allies have also collectively agreed to reverse the trend of declining defence budgets and aim to increase defence expenditure in real terms as GDP grows and direct defence budgets to be as efficient and effective as possible. Allies currently meeting the NATO guidelines to spend a minimum of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence will aim to continue to do so. . . Allies whose current proportion of GDP spent on defence is below this level will halt any decline in defence expenditure; aim to increase defence expenditure in real terms as GDP grows; and aim to move towards the 2% guidelines within a decade with a view to meeting their NATO Capability Targets and filling NATO’s capability shortfalls.”

When the Prime Minister came back from that NATO conference in Wales, he made a statement from the Dispatch Box, speaking very much along those lines. So I thought, “I have not always been as immensely helpful to the Prime Minister as I might have been, because he has done some things I really couldn’t stand, such as putting off the decision to sign the Trident main-gate contracts till 2016, when they should have been decided in this Parliament. So I’ll ask him a helpful question.” I asked, “Will the Prime Minister then give an undertaking that, as long as he remains Prime Minister, that 2% target will be met?” To my dismay, I found that that was not a helpful question at all. It was an unhelpful question, so I have been asking it time and again ever since.

I will now be unable to get on to the content of the next strategic defence and security review, which will have to wait for other debates. I will not even be able to rebut in more detail what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Reigate said about Trident, but I am glad that the House did not agree with him. I simply point out that this 2% issue is not going away. We will have another debate on 12 March, and I hope that everyone who has spoken today will come back then to continue the argument.

Afghanistan

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) on his tour d’horizon. I am sure that, given his wealth of experience and knowledge, he could have used up the entire hour and a half with an analysis from which we would have derived nothing but benefit. As he has been generous enough not to do that, the rest of us can make brief contributions to the debate.

I would like to focus on four lessons from the campaign in Afghanistan. First, we failed to focus on the key objectives. Secondly, we overreacted against former campaigns. Thirdly, we failed to fight on the ground where we are stronger and our enemy is weaker. Fourthly—and, importantly, my hon. Friend concluded by drawing attention to this issue—we failed to maintain dedicated decision-making machinery for controlling and constructing campaigns of this sort. Let me deal briefly with each of those lessons in turn.

In my opinion, there were only two relevant strategic objectives in going into Afghanistan: first, to prevent it from again being used as a base, a training ground or a launch pad for further terrorist attacks against the west; and, secondly, to assist its neighbour, Pakistan, in preventing its nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of al-Qaeda or its imitators. We did not stick to those objectives, as my hon. Friend said and as my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) emphasised in an intervention. We allowed the campaign to change into one that effectively committed us to transforming Afghan society and building up the Afghan nation on the lines of a modern democratic state.

Even if we had been able to succeed in carrying out that objective, what would we have done if al-Qaeda, having been driven from Afghanistan in the first few days or weeks—as it was—had then re-established itself in another state that was vulnerable to acting as its host and base for operations? Would we have invaded that country too and built it from the ground up, all over again, while our enemies, fleet of foot, went to one bolthole after another? We did not concentrate on the key objective, which was to deny Afghanistan to al-Qaeda as a future terrorist training ground and launch pad for its operations. As for the second objective—of being able to assist Pakistan, should the need ever arise, to protect its nuclear arsenal from falling into the wrong hands—that remains as far from being fulfilled today as it was at the outset of the campaign.

However, I do not go along with critics who say that taking a military campaign to Afghanistan was wrong in principle, even if it was badly handled in practice. What was the United States meant to do after an attack had been launched on its homeland, killing nearly 3,000 of its citizens, many of whom were Muslim American citizens? Was it simply supposed to sit back and take no action by way of punishment, retribution and, as an example for the future to other countries, a determined policy to make sure that no such attack could be repeated? Of course it could not be expected to operate in that way, and with our ally having been attacked, it was right and appropriate that we participated in the campaign in response to that attack. The mistake was trying to take over and micro-manage the whole country.

The second question—that of overreaction against former campaigns—leads us to the question of why the mistake of trying to micro-manage the whole country and rebuild it from the grass roots upwards was made. I am sure that it was in response to the way in which Afghanistan had been left entirely to its own devices after the Russians had withdrawn. It was felt, therefore, that by allowing ungoverned space to exist in that way, the opportunity had been created—as it had—for the pestilence of an organisation such as al-Qaeda to take root and flourish. The pendulum swung from leaving the country completely ungoverned to total management, reform and burden-carrying by the western countries for the whole nature of Afghan society. Then, when that did not work and when there was a change of Government in this country, we overreacted again, and the pendulum swung back from micro-management of the whole society to setting an arbitrary date for withdrawal, four years from the announcement in late 2010.

The third failure that I mentioned was the failure to fight according to our strengths. That is where the doctrine of war “down among the people” came in. We do not hear too many people talking about war down among the people these days, but at the time it was very much in vogue. It was a method of combating the enemies that we had mobilised against us in Afghanistan—quite apart from al-Qaeda, who had been expelled from the country—and it was a method by which we sought to fight them at ground level. The effect was that with every patrol that we sent out, we supplied the Taliban with targets to be shot at and blown up at will. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland set out in his survey of the scene, every casualty we incurred was an individual tragedy played out in the living rooms of the whole nation, even though, as he rightly said in relation to the sort of casualties taken in a war of survival such as the second world war, the casualties of a single day in that war were often greater than the casualties of the entire campaign in Afghanistan.

What method should we have adopted? The method that I have always recommended is one of strategic bases or garrisons and bridgehead areas. One does not have to swing from one extreme, of having no involvement in a country and allowing it to become ungoverned space, to the other extreme, of trying to govern the whole country, manage it at the most basic level and build the whole nation and carry the governance of that country on one’s shoulders. One can have regional centres of power from which one can exercise military power periodically and through methods that suit our purposes rather than our enemies’, yet without having to take on the burden of governance of the whole territory concerned, thus making ourselves an irritant and a target for the indigenous people.

That leads, fourthly, to the failure to maintain dedicated decision-making machinery. I was particularly struck by what my hon. Friend said about whether one particular Chief of the Defence Staff from one service could fully appreciate the strategic concerns that somebody from another service might better have grasped. That leads me back to another theme I have been trying to pursue in recent months: the mistake of allowing the chiefs of the armed forces, who used to be central to strategic planning, instead to become the managers of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force is likely to have further consequences of this sort. If one is going to get joint advice on military campaigns, the top representatives of each of the services should be involved in debating and agreeing the military advice that should be given to the political leaders.

I finish by saying that unless we get back to a situation in which there are solid, consistent and tri-service forums in which strategic plans can be properly evolved, politicians will tend to take campaigns in directions that sensible strategic thought would not have them go.

I shall give just two brief examples. First, there was the decision that we took to bomb Libya in 2011. That was a classic case of not having learned the lesson of sticking to the task that was originally set out, because we thought we were voting on having a no-fly zone imposed over Libya. If a no-fly zone had been imposed over Libya, the result would probably have been a stalemate, but the moment Parliament voted for a no-fly zone to be imposed, we got something very different: an all-out aerial offensive on behalf of one side in a civil war. The result was to replace yet another Arab dictator with another aggressive, potentially lethal Islamist state.

Secondly, in Syria in 2013, Parliament prevented something similar from happening. If the Government had had their way at that time, we would have done exactly the same thing in Syria as we did in Libya. Now people are coming to the view, albeit reluctantly, that Assad’s downfall would not necessarily have improved the situation. On the contrary, it would have given our deadly enemies, who have now morphed from al-Qaeda into ISIL, opportunities to take the offensive.

To conclude, there are lessons to be learned, and my hon. Friend has done us a great service by giving us the opportunity to outline a few. I join him in regretting the fact that no serious study is being made of the lessons to be learned. If Libya and Syria are anything to go by, some of the lessons we should have learned from Afghanistan have yet to be taken on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to have been called, because for reasons that people know about—other demands in the House—I could not be here earlier. I am very grateful to have the chance to talk about this issue. I recall speaking in virtually every debate on it in the last few years. In one speech, I threw away all the rhetoric that I had intended to use and just read out the names of the soldiers who had died in Afghanistan. There is a splendid group active on this issue just a few miles from my constituency.

The last time I read out the names was the day when the 200th victim of the Afghan conflict was announced. He lived in Abergavenny. It is extraordinary that it is now forbidden, under the rules of the House, to read out the lists of the names of the fallen. The decision was taken at that time, but it is much more powerful to read out those names so that we, as Members of Parliament, can be confronted with the terrible reality of the deaths of these young, brave warriors that we have caused. We took the decisions that led to that, but we are frightened against doing what I have mentioned.

I was once expelled from the House for suggesting that politicians lied and soldiers died, but I do not think that any of the politicians, of all parties, who said to our young soldiers, “You are going to Afghanistan to ensure that there isn’t terrorism on the streets of Britain,” were so stupid as to believe that. There was no threat from the Taliban that they would commit terrorism on the streets of Britain. There might have been from al-Qaeda, but those two groups were conflated. The reason why the Taliban were killing our soldiers was that we were in their country and it was part of their religious duty to expel us from there, but none the less the lie was used by Ministers of all parties to send our troops to their deaths in an utterly futile war.

We must examine the issue. We must have a full inquiry into it as soon as possible, because we must inform ourselves about why we took that decision. I think it is to do with the hubris of Prime Ministers. Prime Ministers, of all parties, behave in a special way when the war drums start beating. They talk in a different way. They get the rhetoric of Churchill. They drag it out, because here they are, having their big moment in history. They are writing their page in history—it is usually, sadly, a bloody page. The situation is not to do with the ramshackle things that Prime Ministers do every day, the boring details of law-making. It is a chance for them to be there and to be recorded, and they behave in a different way. They are hardly entirely sane on these occasions.

I have seen four Prime Ministers behave in that way. They strut like Napoleon here. At least we have the good sense of 650 MPs, as we had on 29 August 2013, when the present Prime Minister was urging the House of Commons, urging the nation, to go into Syria to attack Assad, who is the deadly enemy of ISIL. Now, we are in the same country and attacking ISIL, which is the deadly enemy of Assad. Even today, we hear the conflicting views on the conflict there. Why on earth should we go into a conflict between the Sunnis and the Shi’as that is ancient, deep, incomprehensible to us and nothing to do with us?

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s last point, about the 1,000-year conflict between those groups. He may remember that I was one of the 39 rebels whose votes were decisive in preventing the attack on Assad. However, could I ask him not to overstate the case, in this sense? Even he admitted that it would have been right to take military action to expel al-Qaeda. Surely the key point is how and why the campaign changed its nature after al-Qaeda was expelled.

[Paul Flynn]

Indeed. We have an honourable history in which we have intervened in various conflicts in the world on a humanitarian basis. We have done that in Sierra Leone, East Timor, Bosnia and Kosovo. It is something that we do very well. It is part of our history, and we are very good at it. We have all the skills and the bravery of our soldiers to do it. That is entirely honourable.

Where we have gone wrong is when we have gone into conflicts in which we have attempted to be masters of the universe. We are not. We are not a superstate—far from it—and we have not been for a long time. I believe that if we change our priorities and become an independent country, we have an independent foreign policy. We do not have that. Canada does. Holland does. Both those countries were involved in Afghanistan and they made honourable contributions above what could be expected of nations of their size, but they pulled out at an early stage when they saw the futility of the mission—that we could not succeed, we were not going to reduce the amount of heroin that was being grown there and we were not going to have an effect in terms of nation building.

It was mission impossible to move a nation from the 13th century to the 20th century, but we kept on because we have this link with the United States. I believe that if we are to have a defensible policy in the future on this area, where we have spent huge sums of money, we have to do it as an independent country and not be tied to the United States. I believe that we have not had that since the Vietnam war. Harold Wilson rightly said that we were not going to be involved in another mission impossible.

We must learn from this decision before we take any other decision. I believe that very strongly influencing the decision that we took on 29 August 2013 not to go to war, not to follow the Prime Minister into attacking Assad, was the fact that the House of Commons and the nation have lost faith in prime ministerial edicts that come out and say that we act as leaders of the universe, leaders of the world, setting world policies. We are not in that position.

We all pay tribute—tribute has been paid this afternoon —to the extraordinary bravery of our soldiers. How much we owe them! They are as professional and courageous as any of the soldiers in our proud military history, but I believe that we, as politicians, have let them down through our decisions on the Iraq war and the decision to go into Helmand.

Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

I do not think it is as simple and as straightforward as that. As evidence emerges, one of the things we are finding is that more members of the armed forces—notably women—rightly feel more able to make clear allegations, which doubtless are well founded, of bullying, harassment and so on, and that often such grievances are settled privately. What I mean by that is not that they are settled in some cosy way, in a corridor, but that people do not necessarily have formally to go through the grievance system. I am open to making sure we get the right result, and I certainly want to make sure nobody in our armed forces suffers from any form of discrimination, bullying or harassment, but the way in which we achieve that is perhaps the debate to be had—we are all agreed absolutely on the aim.

The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) will, I know, have noticed that 10% of Royal Navy cases were for bullying, harassment or discrimination, and that the figure is 43% for our Army and 38% for the RAF. The figures show that, as we know, we have considerably more to do to make sure that it does not matter what anyone’s sex or sexual orientation is, and that they should be free within our armed forces, and indeed anywhere else, from any form of bullying, harassment or discrimination. I wanted to put on record the fact that the majority of cases are about pay, pensions and allowances.

In her annual report, published on 27 March last year, former Service Complaints Commissioner Dr Susan Atkins could not provide an assurance that the current system was operating efficiently, effectively or fairly. That is of concern not only to everyone in this House but, I assure Members, to all Ministers in the MOD, and rightly so.

It is only right and fair that at this stage I pay tribute to the great work that Dr Susan Atkins did in her time as commissioner. I found it a great pleasure to work with her. I think she started her job in a different place from where she ended it, and I think she made huge strides. I have no doubt that she faced many difficulties in her appointment, but she seized them robustly, she took no prisoners, and she undoubtedly improved the system. I hope that the members of the House of Commons Defence Committee, who I know took a keen interest in her work, will agree with my assessment of the great work she did, and that we will sorely miss her.

I also think I speak on behalf of everybody—and if I do not, I will be intervened on, no doubt—when I say that we have an excellent replacement in Nicola Williams, who will be our first service complaints ombudsman. She, too, is an outstanding individual and, if I may say so, an outstanding woman.

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

As a member of the Committee when Nicola was interviewed, may I say that I was deeply impressed by the way she stood up, with good humour and resilience, to some tough questioning? Does my hon. Friend agree that what is particularly important about this Bill, given some people’s fears that the chain of command system could be subverted or clogged up, is that proposed new section 340I(1) to the Armed Forces Act 2006 states that the ombudsman has complete discretion

“to determine whether to begin, continue or discontinue an investigation”?

Does she agree that that is an important safeguard?

[Anna Soubry]

I absolutely do, and I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his sensible, common-sense words. I join him in paying tribute—again—to Nicola Williams, and I think he will agree with me about Dr Atkins, too.

What my hon. Friend says is absolutely right. I think—and hope—that there will be some debate and argument, and I was going to pay tribute to the Defence Committee for the great work it has done over a number of years in wanting to make huge changes to the role of the Service Complaints Commissioner.

I anticipate that we in this House will not necessarily agree on everything, although I would like to think we will be able to find a way of agreeing. The most important point, however, is that we agree on the principles of the Bill. We agree on what we are all seeking to achieve—apart from the thematic, which I know will separate us. We are all absolutely agreed in wanting to make sure we have an ombudsman who acts and works without fear or favour, who is rigorous in their investigation, and who puts the person—the individual—at the heart of all the work they do.

One of the great joys of the Bill is that it is not overly prescriptive, and that is very much right. We want our ombudsman to have free rein. I am told that Susan Atkins would visit units and, if she was concerned about incidents or that people felt they could not raise a grievance or a complaint, she did not hesitate in taking that up, not just with Ministers but with the chiefs of staff. She certainly had the sort of determination and brave, rigorous approach that we are all agreed on, and which we will see—I do not doubt—in Nicola Williams.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We are making progress by changing the attitudes of some of the old and the bold in the Conservative party and changing the culture among the senior management of all three services, who accept as a fact of life that bullying, harassment and sexual discrimination are not acceptable in our armed forces and will not be tolerated. The Minister is right that the present chiefs, as I know them, take a zero-tolerance view of such behaviour, and this will support them in ensuring that it does not happen.

[Dr Lewis]

I pay tribute to the hard work of the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who has been a champion of the Bill. In order to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), I would share his concerns if I thought there was any danger of the system becoming clogged up with complaints that were designed to paralyse it. That is why I think that the provision in the Bill to which I referred in my intervention on the Minister is so important. The complaints commissioner has the right to investigate or not to investigate a given complaint, which avoids the danger that I think my hon. Friend would otherwise be rightly concerned about.

[Mr Jones]

All I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that he should read the report of the debate we had when the Service Complaints Commissioner was introduced, because this is not about interfering in the chain of command. The present commissioner has done a very good job of highlighting the delays in the processes, particularly in the Army. Anyone who deals with complaints, whether in industry, local government or anywhere else, knows that it is better to resolve a matter quickly, rather than leaving it for a long period. The present commissioner has certainly been highly critical. When we look at some of the cases set out in the last report, we have to ask ourselves why on earth they took so long. They could have been resolved quite quickly, which would have not only improved the Army’s reputation for dealing with such matters but given the complainants satisfaction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

They are. However, the important point about the ombudsman—this is what is great about the service complaints commissioner—is that it is outside the chain of command, independently looking inwards. That is not to say that it would always be critical. On some issues, Susan Atkins has not been critical and has supported changes that have taken place in our armed forces. I give credit to the service chiefs for bringing forward some of those changes. If, in a modern age, we want a system that is going to be robust and seen to be fair, it is very important to have that element of independence. That is especially true for bullying. We know that on occasion bullying is an isolated incident, but there have also been examples of where it is part of the chain of command and responsible for the culture that exists in some areas.

The Bill gives the ombudsman power to investigate where it sees fit, but we must understand what powers it would have and what it could do with what it finds. Yes, it can report to the Defence Council, but without any further powers or the ability to make changes, the onus in terms of the defence budget might be to ignore what the ombudsman says. We must clarify that point in the Bill.

As I have said, some recommendations can be made, but we need a method to ensure that reports and findings do not sit on a shelf, and that the Minister of the day, or the Defence Council, does not reject or simply note them. That would undermine not only the role of the service complaints ombudsman, but its independence. People who go to the ombudsman expect to get a fair hearing and to know that something will be done about their complaint.

It is vital that any new system works to the benefit of those who come to rely on it and that the Bill does not impose any unnecessary barriers on individuals and families making a complaint. The current Service Complaints Commissioner has been highly critical of the Army for the length of time it takes to deal with the complaints. Any system must obviously have robust time limits, but the Bill proposes that the Secretary of State will set time limits within which the individual must lodge a complaint. That time limit must not be less than six weeks after the date on which the individual receives their decision from their internal complaints system. In an ideal world that might be a simple system, but the nature of service life might lead to a situation where those time limits cannot be met. If that was the case, people would be time-bound when bringing forward a complaint. I think we need to consider that issue in Committee, and see whether we can allow some flexibility in the way that complaints are brought forward, so that someone does not miss taking a complaint forward because of the time limit.

The ombudsman service must be independent from the chain of command and the armed forces, and must be trusted by the people it is investigating. It must also be seen by servicemen and women lower down the chain of command as a process that is clearly independent.

This is a bit like déjà-vu, because I remember when the Service Complaints Commissioner was being appointed that the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) was one of the—well, he could certainly be described as a dinosaur if not even worse—people who said that the end of the earth was going to come if the service ombudsman was not someone with a military background. It is clear that service personnel cannot hold that post, but I would also be reluctant to have anyone with a direct service background. Certainly the criticism levelled at Dr Atkins when she was first appointed was unfair and has—quite rightly—been proved wrong given the effective way that she got to know quickly how the armed forces work, and the way that she got the support and good will of people at all levels. It is important that the ombudsman is not seen as part of the old boys’ network—interestingly, the first two have been women.

On representation, occasionally those who lodge a complaint, or who speak of an injustice but never enter the complaints system, cannot see the complaint through—we have already heard about people who die before their complaint is heard. In these rare cases, it is sometimes important to family members that the complaint continues, and if someone makes a complaint against an individual, that individual will still have an opportunity to put forward a defence, albeit in the absence of the accuser. Also, many complaints relate to matters of service pay. In these cases, no one is required to make a defence, so it seems only fair that they be allowed to continue to conclusion. To stop such a case would be totally unfair. All cases should be pursued as a matter of due diligence to allow the ombudsman to oversee the entire system.

This touches on something else the Service Complaints Commissioner has done. A complaint might throw up inconsistencies in areas of policy that need addressing, and just because someone dies, it does not necessarily mean the wider implications do not need addressing either by the chain of command or more widely.

[Dr Lewis]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, I have only recently rejoined the Defence Select Committee after a long absence, so I am not as well sighted on the Bill as perhaps I ought to be. However, given that so much of the concern that led to this sort of legislation was about deaths, will he comment on the role of the ombudsman in relation to complaints brought by families of people who have died?

[Mr Jones]

That is a very important point. I was a member of the Defence Select Committee when it looked into Deepcut—as, too, was the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock). We could not help but think that the way the families were dealt with was truly shocking, both in terms of basic human decency and because it meant that, unfortunately, the truth could never be arrived at. That was unfortunate for the families, obviously, and for members of the armed forces who were accused of things they clearly did not do.

We have made progress, however, thanks to the Service Complaints Commissioner and this new Bill. The important thing is independent oversight. Individuals are not going to continue with a course of action if they know it is leading to deaths in the armed forces. We know there will be tragedies in the armed forces, on the battlefield and in training, given the robust and difficult training regime, and when they happen, it is important, for the sake of the families, that we get all the information early on; that the matter be dealt with compassionately; and that things be put right early on, if mistakes were made.

I think there has been a change in this country—certainly in respect of local authorities and health boards, for example—and sometimes there is a culture of arguing why something should stay the same. However, if people say sorry early on and admit to mistakes, while it will always be difficult for families, at least they would know what happened. If so, lessons can be learned and measures put in place to militate against such things happening again, which will at least give some comfort to the families.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I spoke earlier of my diffidence. I think I should move into full retreat and just carry on with my speech because my hon. Friend already knows far more about that than I do, and I pay tribute to him again.

I want to change the subject slightly. I have only a page and a half left of my notes. I hope that I can have a little indulgence. Dr Susan Atkins stood up for the men and women of our armed forces as they came under real strain. They have fought overseas, in conflicts not really understood or supported by their countrymen back home, when warfare is changing, technology is evolving, stability is crumbling and new threats are arising on a monthly basis. Against that background, at the NATO summit, which the UK hosted, we set out to persuade other European countries of the imperative of doing what NATO agreed only in 2006—that each country should spend at least 2% of its GDP on defence. How right we were to argue that. How important it is that, as the world becomes less safe, we do what we can to increase our security and reduce our reliance on others, particularly the United States. So it comes as a real shock that this country appears to be drifting towards an election with not one single party committed to spending 2% of GDP on defence. As the economy recovers, defence must share in that recovery.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

My right hon. Friend, being as long in the tooth as I am, will recall that during the cold war years this country spent between 4% and 5% on defence. Therefore, is not 2% a pretty modest aim for us to have in the present international climate?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

My hon. Friend is right, if ambitious, but who could argue that the world is a safer place now than in the cold war years? I think it is far less safe because we live in a multi-polar world. Mutually assured destruction brought us, curiously, some stability.