Defence
Debate between Julian Lewis and Mark Francois(2 days, 17 hours ago)
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Mr Francois
No.
Armed Forces Day is too important for this sort of silly nonsense, which embarrasses Basildon council in the eyes of the public and, indeed, its local MPs. In all seriousness, perhaps the Minister could have a word with his colleagues on the council and make sure that this unfortunate oversight does not happen again.
Defence is traditionally a bipartisan issue. We all believe in the defence of the realm, and I have always believed that it is the first duty of Government. However, I say to the Minister, on the Floor of the House, that he cannot have it both ways. He cannot on the one hand plead for unity between the Government and the Opposition and then, when it suits, imply that Opposition spokesmen are Russian, Chinese or Iranian fellow travellers just because they had the temerity not to agree with the Government on their bonkers Chagos deal. My honest advice to the Minister is to make up his mind and be consistent; he will then receive the respect that he asks for.
I turn to the order. Armed Forces Acts are normally subject to quinquennial review. We had Armed Forces Acts in 2011, 2016 and 2021, and we can expect a further Act before the instrument expires in December 2026. Given the vagaries of parliamentary life, few things are certain, but assuming for a moment that it will be the Armed Forces Minister and I who will take this legislation through on behalf of our respective parties, this seems a good opportunity to ask the Minister two questions. First, what are the latest timings for that legislation, and when can we expect to see a Bill? Secondly, could he give the House some idea of the likely key themes of that Bill, and the areas, if any, in which the legislation is likely to differ materially from the Armed Forces Act 2021? In fairness, he dropped a hint a few moments ago that there will be service justice provisions; perhaps he could expand on that slightly, if he has the opportunity. I ask because there will be a large number of interested parties, including the armed forces themselves, obviously, the armed forces families federations, military charities and others. From previous experience, I can say that they will take a close and important interest in the Bill. Giving them as good a heads-up as possible is clearly desirable. Perhaps the Minister could assist the House with that.
As the explanatory notes that the Minister referred to point out, were this order not to be passed,
“The key effect…would be to end the provisions which are necessary to maintain the armed forces as disciplined bodies. Crucially, the 2006 Act confers powers and sets out procedures to enforce the duty of members of the armed forces to obey lawful commands. Without the 2006 Act, those powers and procedures would no longer have effect; Commanding Officers and the Court Martial would have no powers of punishment in respect of a failure to obey a lawful command or any other form of disciplinary or criminal misconduct. Members of the armed forces would still owe allegiance to His Majesty, but the power of enforcement would be removed.”
Clearly, that would be very undesirable, and for the avoidance of doubt, we will most certainly not vote against this order in a few minutes’ time, but there is an important point here about members of the armed forces being required to obey lawful commands. That brings me on to my third question for the Minister.
As recently as Defence questions on Monday, we debated in the Chamber the fate of the 300,000 or so British Army veterans who served in Northern Ireland on Operation Banner. They were lawfully commanded to help uphold the rule of law in support of the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC, now the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and to protect all people in Northern Ireland, of whatever tradition, from heinous acts of terrorism, whether by bomb or by bullet. As the Minister will be well aware, the Government have tabled a so-called remedial order that would cut out elements of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, thus potentially opening up some of those veterans to an endless cycle of investigation and reinvestigation. The order also makes it easier for the likes of Gerry Adams and his compadres to sue the British taxpayer for hundreds of millions of pounds.
According to a press report in The Daily Telegraph yesterday and an associated answer by the Northern Ireland Secretary to a parliamentary question, the Government have decided to drop the part of the remedial order that would assist Mr Adams and his associates in suing the British taxpayer. If that report is true, we Conservative Members would warmly welcome it. However, it does not solve the problem of our brave veterans who served in Northern Ireland often being persecuted at the behest of Sinn Féin.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Whenever my right hon. Friend and other members of the Conservative shadow defence team bring up the question of reopening this lawfare against our veterans, Government Ministers say, “We will be sure to give veterans maximum support.” To me, that implies not protecting them from the lawfare, but supporting them as they go through the process; but the process is the punishment. Everybody knows that people involved in fatal accidents would serve only a limited prison term if, heaven forbid, they were convicted, but the probability is that they will not be convicted; the punishment lies in what they have to go through before they are acquitted.
Mr Francois
My right hon. Friend chaired the Select Committee on which I served some years ago, when it produced a very good report on this issue, so he is an expert on this. All I will say is that when it comes to legacy issues, Labour often provides legal support, but not necessarily always to veterans.
If the Minister wishes to maintain morale in the armed forces past and present—this order is clearly necessary for doing that—perhaps he will take this opportunity to clarify the Government’s position. Do they still intend to table a remedial order, or to move straight to what the Labour manifesto describes as new legislation in the field of legacy matters? Which is it?
Sir David Amess Adjournment Debate
Debate between Julian Lewis and Mark Francois(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mr Francois
No, I can reassure the hon. Gentleman and the House that I only intend to raise three topics.
Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Before my right hon. Friend leaves the subject of Sir David, whom I first met in the 1970s—in a different place, and when I was briefly in a different party—I ask him to confirm my recollection: that in all those many years, I cannot think of a single occasion when David said a mean, unkind or unfair thing about anyone. There are not many people about whom one can say that, and I for one regard him as an inspiration.
Mr Francois
I generally agree with my right hon. Friend, particularly about defence matters, and he has summed my great friend up very well. At the end of my speech, however, I will make a small revelation about David and the 1983 general election, which I hope colleagues will find amusing.
International Immunities and Privileges
Debate between Julian Lewis and Mark Francois(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, may I begin by congratulating you on your election and welcoming you to the Chair? I am sure that you will chair our proceedings excellently. We wish you all good luck.
May I also thank the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) for a fine, fluent and—if I may say so—at times poignant maiden speech? He spoke well on behalf of his constituents. I have it on good authority that when my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) was the procurement Minister, the hon. Member took him on a tour of Brize Norton and helped to brief him on the A400M. My hon. Friend has asked me to pass on his thanks. As a former Army officer, may I say to a former RAF officer what a great pleasure it is to see the RAF turn up on time? There is indeed a first time for everything. [Laughter.]
The purpose of the order is laid out clearly in paragraph 4.1 of the explanatory memorandum, which states that it
“gives effect to the Convention between the Government of the Italian Republic, the Government of Japan and the Government of the United Kingdom…establishing the Global Combat Air Programme International Government Organisation signed on 14 December 2023”.
It points out that
“The Convention was negotiated by the Ministry of Defence.”
My third welcome is to the Minister; it is good to see her in her place. However, as the convention was nominated by the Ministry of Defence, could she explain for clarity why the FCDO and not the MOD is handling this statutory instrument?
The Minister kindly nominated me for a place on the House of Commons Defence Committee. As today appears to be a day for people taking up nominations, I will gladly accept that and announce that I am going to run—for that Committee.
I also point out that in the explanatory memorandum the policy context for the order—this is important—is described as follows:
“In December 2022, the Prime Ministers of UK, Japan and Italy launched GCAP to deliver a next generation aircraft by 2035. The signing of the GCAP Convention between the partners took place in December 2023 and was conducted by the respective Defence Secretaries of the three nations. The GIGO will function as the executive body with the legal capacity to place contracts with industrial partners engaged in the GCAP.”
So far, so good. The debate takes on some additional resonance, however, because we now have a defence review, which some people have interpreted as a sword of Damocles hanging over this important programme. My fourth welcome is to the new Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), who represents a military constituency; it is good to see him in his place, too.
A few minutes ago at Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister described GCAP as a “really important programme”. It is. It is good that he was able to go to Farnborough, see the mock-up of the aircraft for himself and receive a briefing.
When I served on the Defence Committee in the last Parliament, in March 2024 we travelled to Japan to examine the programme as best we could from the Japanese perspective. We spoke to politicians, civil servants, industrialists and the Japanese air self-defence force—its military. We were going to write what I believe would have been a very positive report, and then someone went and called a general election. We cannot blame the Minister for that, but she and some of her colleagues did somehow appear to benefit from it.
I would like to stress three themes from that trip, which came out strongly. The first was the absolute unanimity of purpose among the Japanese to deliver the programme. As one politician put it to us,
“We live in a tough neighbourhood, including three autocracies with nuclear weapons. We need to strengthen our defences, and this programme is fundamental to that.”
I think that is a very good summary of the Japanese perspective.
Secondly, we were struck by the willingness of the Japanese to consider third party exports of GCAP to make the aircraft affordable by increasing its production run. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk was always hot on that when he was the procurement Minister. For various historical reasons, I do not think that the Japanese would necessarily have taken that view even a few years ago; that is important.
Thirdly, the Japanese have an absolute determination to achieve the in-service date of 2035, which is referred to directly in the memorandum. The Japanese air self-defence force uses a mixture of F-15J Eagle aircraft and the F-2, which is sort of a souped-up version of the American F-16. They are both good and capable aircraft, but they are getting rather long in the tooth. The Japanese have to plan forward against a threat from the Chinese J-20 or the Russian Su-57. The risk is that by the mid-2030s those aircraft will be outmatched by those two powerful new combat aircraft.
Reference has been made to the F-35. It is a fine aircraft, but it is expensive to buy and very expensive to run. The Americans have found that to their cost—the F-35 was nicknamed by the American media
“the plane that ate the Pentagon”.
It might not necessarily be the answer to the Treasury’s dream. Moreover, for the record, deliveries of the F-35 to the United States forces were suspended for nearly a year—they have only just been resumed—because of problems in upgrading the computers and the software. If we are to talk about the realities, the F-35 has been quite a troubled programme and, to some extent, continues to be so.
What would be the implications of cancellation of GCAP? This is an international agreement and, as it says in paragraph 7 of the explanatory memorandum:
“No external consultation was undertaken as the instrument implements provisions of an international agreement to which the United Kingdom will be obliged to give effect as a matter of international law once it enters into force.”
The first implication were we to cancel it is that it would put back Anglo-Japanese relations and Anglo-Italian relations, arguably for decades. I would not want to be the CEO of a British company trying to sell something to the Japanese Government in the aftermath of the cancellation of GCAP. Secondly, given the scale and the prominence of the programme, there would be a serious risk that we in the United Kingdom would achieve a reputation as an unreliable partner in major military collaborative programmes—everything from AUKUS through to collaboration in space. In an era when things such as a sixth-generation combat aircraft are so expensive that, as I intimated earlier, even the Americans are struggling to afford one on their own, the reality for us as a medium power is that we need to collaborate. We would find it very difficult to find future partners if we suddenly cancelled such an important and sizeable programme for financial reasons.
Thirdly, it would make a nonsense of the UK’s so-called tilt to the Pacific, which was inherent to the so-called integrated review and was reinforced when the review was refreshed before the general election. How can we tilt to the Pacific if we then cancel a major collaborative programme with a critical Pacific partner, which faces challenges from Russia and China even more immediately than we do? Bluntly, our name would be mud in that theatre of operations if we were to do that.
Fourthly, there is what one might call the prosperity agenda. As they said in the King’s Speech, the Government are very committed to growth—let us not debate building and the green belt now, but focus on this issue. In the last few years, about 80% of the UK’s defence exports have come from combat air—mainly sales of Typhoon or our 15% workshare on the F-35. That has averaged roughly £6 billion a year. Again, what would be the threat to our exports and our reputation as a reliable supplier if we were to cancel the programme?
What should we do? The GIGO, which this memorandum establishes, will incorporate prominent representatives from all three countries—the UK, Japan and Italy—and it will be headquartered here. If the programme is to survive, which I strongly believe it should, the GIGO has a vital role to play as the management organisation. It will have to be leaner and less bureaucratic than its predecessor organisations, which oversaw the Tornado and Typhoon programmes—two wonderful aircraft with a proud heritage in the Royal Air Force. I think everyone in the industry would admit that those organisations were a bit too bureaucratic.
The GIGO will have to be a lot leaner and meaner to get the job done. The principal industrial partners—BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Leonardo, among others—will have a real challenge. Historically, the answer to such a dilemma might have been, “Look, it’s a very complicated programme. It will take years to achieve, and it all depends on how many countries join, how many aircraft they buy and what configuration they go for. Will the Saudis participate? Will they want it built in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia if they do participate? There are lots of imponderables, so we will come back to you in about five years’ time with a unit price.” That will not wash. I would submit that one of the first tasks of the GIGO, working with those industrial partners and the three Governments, is to come up with at least a realistic pricing envelope for the programme, which the Treasury can look at and, hopefully, take a positive view on. If they do not do that, there can be no blank cheque, even for this.
To conclude, there is no such thing as an uncancellable defence programme—although I still hope for Ajax—but this comes close. To cancel this programme for short-term financial reasons would be a disaster militarily, politically, diplomatically and industrially. If it comes down to GCAP, AUKUS or Ajax, for me, Ajax has to go, and I say that as a former soldier. We need to understand how extremely serious the implications are of cancelling this programme.
I was a soldier, but the Royal Air Force has a proud tradition in the defence of this country and its interests, going back to the Battle of Britain and the first world war—when it grew out of the Army, I hasten to say.
Mr Francois
And the Navy, in which my father served, for completeness. The Royal Air Force needs this aircraft. We need it. The Japanese, the Italians and the west need it. By all means, let us control the costs, but let us keep it. We are not going to scrap the Spitfire of the future.