Defence Reform Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brazier]

May I express my thanks to my right hon. Friend? I am delighted by that, and I know that the knowledge that the reserve units out there will once again have a powerful independent voice will make a difference. When I talk about some of the current problems, people will understand just how much that voice matters every bit as much as it did in 1914.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I pay tribute to the work he has done over the years on the reservists. Can he explain why, when the Opposition tabled an amendment in Committee that asked for figures to be—

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Sour grapes.

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[Mr Jones]

It is not sour grapes; it is a matter of fact. When the Opposition tabled that amendment in Committee, the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) and other Conservative and coalition Members voted against it.

[Mr Brazier]

I do not think the gathering of individual statistics should be a statutory matter, but the fact is that the Government have made a perfectly clear pledge that they are going to publish them. The crucial thing from the point of view of the ordinary reservist is that this body, which is elected by former reservists and respected by them as a body that effectively looked after their interests for nearly a century, is back with a really crucial position, able to make this report. When it visits the Army Recruiting Group, it will be heard with considerably more authority when it is known that it will be put on a permanent statutory basis and will be able to tell us what is really going on. I would like to say, however, that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) has taken a close interest in this matter, which I respect.

The plain fact is that when the Regular Army took over recruiting in 2006, the numbers collapsed. The collecting of statistics collapsed, too, and the structure made no serious effort to address the challenges it was taking on. It simply raided the budget and used it for Regulars. To provide just one example, from 2006 to this day—it is now seven years on—Army recruiting offices are open only from 9 to 5.30 Monday to Friday, so they are not even available for people with civilian jobs.

A number of other things happened at the same time. There was a steady reduction in the flow of equipment to the reserves. There was a huge cut in the training budget. In 2009, we almost lost the whole training budget for the Reserves for six months, and I pay tribute to a small number of colleagues on both sides of the House who supported us in that battle. Worst of all, from 2009, all deployments of formed bodies to Afghanistan stopped—echoing the argument that had taken place at the outset of the first world war—and units were effectively told, “You are just here to act as part-time personnel agencies for the Regular Army”. That really destroyed much of the Territorial Army’s officer corps.

I strongly support what the Government are trying to do with the reserves. The House will know how much I am in favour of a rebalancing. I also commend many things that have taken place: the equipment is improving; there has been a huge increase in the funds available for training, particularly for collective training; and there have been some interesting initiatives at Sandhurst, under the charismatic leadership of the recently appointed Commandant, General Tim Evans. He started a number of improvements in officer training, one of which was the personal brain child of the Chief of the General Staff—taking people through the training in a single eight-week package, timed to coincide with the summer vacation in universities. The pairing of units is another initiative.

The Army Recruiting Group, however, has not got its act together; it is every bit as disorganised as it has always been. I hope the House will forgive me if I give just one example in detail to show just how hopeless it is. When the RFCAs lost their recruiting brief, the requirement for medicals, which had been very efficiently organised, disappeared. Suddenly last year, as part of common selection, it was announced that the Territorials were to do medicals, too. A system was set up, using the NHS as the old one had done, but in a fashion that had not even been cleared by the lawyers in relation to the Data Protection Act 1998. It was completely unworkable. People were told to take a form to their GP and get him to sign it off and send it in. So inefficient was this system that GPs did not know what to do. If units rang up to see what was going on, they were breaching the Data Protection Act. The system was so hopeless that a unit I know well—for obvious reasons, I will not say which—that had had an average of 48 successful enlistees per quarter in the months up to that change, saw a rising trend in applicants turn into just eight enlistees per quarter in the subsequent quarters.

I could go on and on. The software is unworkable; Ministers have already acknowledged that. Unfortunately, that compounds the problems at the recruiting centres. Because it is de facto impossible for somebody to do the form online on their own—if they make one mistake, their application is lost in cyberspace—it has to be done either at recruiting centres or in the units. The recruiting centres, of course, are not available.

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[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I agree with everybody who has said that reservists have performed a singularly valuable task in recent operations—about 25,000 have been deployed—whether by augmenting existing units or by contributing specialist skills that would not have been available to the regular armed forces. I remember very well visiting Basra with the Select Committee on Defence just a couple of months after the war ended, and finding that the entire Iraqi economy was being put right by an Army officer who, in civilian life, was a banker. He was responsible for putting Iraq’s finances in order. Clearly, he had more success than the previous Prime Minister had in this country.

That brings me to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Select Committee, about the budget deficit. It is important that we all understand why we are here today and why we are debating these matters. We would not be here if Labour had not left this country with a catastrophic budget deficit of £156 billion. That is why we had to make tough decisions—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I cannot resist giving way to my friend.

[Mr Jones]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that when he was in the shadow defence team in opposition, he was calling for a larger Army and a larger Navy. Did not the present Prime Minister and his team, when in opposition, agree with all our spending commitments, including those on defence, right up to 2008?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman had better wait to hear what I have to say. What I am about to say now is what I said when I was a Minister in the Ministry of Defence, which I would say more privately than I have been saying more recently. It is important that people recognise that in the Ministry of Defence we were faced, like every other Department bar those whose budgets were ring-fenced, with a requirement to produce savings immediately, because unless the Chancellor of the Exchequer was able to deliver a comprehensive spending review that reassured the capital markets that Britain was intent upon putting its public finances back in order, we would have been in an even worse position than we inherited in May 2010.

I have much sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and I can see where he is coming from: he wants a larger standing Army, and so do I. I am a Conservative. I believe that defence of the realm is the first duty of Government. I found it deeply distressing to be a Minister in a Ministry of Defence that was having to cut its budget, but we were in coalition. I see my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), who was an extremely collegiate colleague in the Ministry of Defence. I make no criticism of him; my criticism is of his leader. We had to make some pretty tough decisions, and ultimately it was not we in the Ministry of Defence who decided what our budget was. That was decided at No. 10 and in the National Security Council. That is what happened.

We are here today because we had to make some tough decisions. In other circumstances we would not have wished to have a standing Army reduced by 20,000 and a requirement to supplement it with another 30,000 reservists. The White Paper which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State produced earlier this year is littered with remarks about the financial constraints in which we have to operate, so it seems to me that we are making the best of a difficult situation. I hope, though, that the strategic defence review of 2015 will give us, particularly in the Conservative party, an opportunity to tell the nation that we intend to reorder the public spending priorities of the next Conservative Government.

I believe that in this uncertain and volatile world an increase in defence expenditure is a must. We are not there yet, and I hope to make the case over the next couple of years that that is what we have to do. We must restore some of the capability gaps from which we are suffering, and we must seek to repair some of the damage that has inevitably been done by the cuts that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) had to make. He and my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for Defence should be hugely congratulated on having sorted out the Ministry of Defence’s appalling finances, which they inherited from the previous Administration.

The budget of the Ministry of Defence is now back on track, which is good news, but the strategic defence and security review of 2015 must give us an opportunity to enhance our niche capabilities, such as cyber, where my right hon. Friend has done an excellent job. I hope we can increase our investment in defence diplomacy.

I also believe that we need a larger standing Army. I must say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) that I am not sure that he can predict what kind of world we will find ourselves in when we draw down from Afghanistan. The past four years have taught me that predicting the future is pretty difficult. None of us could have foreseen the Arab spring, the conflict in Syria or what is going on in the South China sea as we speak. This is an unstable world. Ultimately, the niche capabilities are important, but being able to take and hold territory requires having boots on the ground.

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[Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Ind)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). Many of his remarks I agree with; some I disagree with. However, I particularly admire my close and hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier)—who sadly has gone for a cup of tea—and my other close and hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). They have opposing views, but they both have the good of the nation and the armed forces at their heart. I have no doubt about that.

I think I am right in saying that of all the ex-regulars and ex-Territorials in the House, I am the only one who has been a professional recruiter. My last job in the Army was as a colonel in the Army training and recruiting agency. I use the word “agency” with a curl of the lip: it was not a command or a military formation of any sort, which was one of the reasons I resigned from the Army—because of its disgraceful conduct, particularly over recruiting. I will return to that in a moment. I also had the privilege to belong to and to command a battalion that, at the height of the Territorial Army, had to find permanent staff instructors, adjutants and the like for up to four Territorial battalions—our third and fourth battalions, and what were then called the 1st and 2nd Battalions the Mercian Regiment.

That is where I first heard about STABs, which stands for stupid TA—and then a word that means “illegitimate people”—and about arrogant Regular Army “illegitimate people”. That is an example of the desperate confusion and rivalry between regulars and Territorials, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury made such clear reference, from the first and second world wars, and so on. I am a little out of date now, but in my experience that was a deeply divisive and extremely unhelpful view. In the Regular Army, we had to provide a lot of those individuals, which absolutely was a nuisance. None the less, anybody who looked at the colours of my regiment—or, indeed, of the fusiliers or any of the infantry or cavalry regiments in the British Army—would have seen that the majority of the battle honours on those colours were won by battalions and regiments from the Territorial Force or the Territorial Army. It is a fact; we cannot get away from it. Any Regular Army individual who ignores the importance, the potential or the sheer enthusiasm of the reserves—the TF, the TA or whatever we want to call them—is simply daft.

However, there are reservations I would like to express about the future of warfare and the type of forces we need to fight those wars. Turning to new clause 1, my experience as a commanding officer is that I was told in the late ’90s that my battalion was about 40 men under strength and that we could not recruit more than that, which, in a recruiting famine, would be quite impossible. I talked closely to what was then called the recruiting group of the Army training and recruiting agency, listened to its advice and did precisely the opposite.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Gentleman has first-hand experience of recruitment. Does he agree with the earlier comment of the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) about recruiters being staffed from the sick, lame or lazy?

[Patrick Mercer]

I was deeply offended by that remark. If I may, I would gently suggest that it sounds like a comment from someone who left the Army as a junior officer, without having to provide the sort of individuals that we provided for our recruiting offices, who were the very finest, Brecon-trained senior and junior non-commissioned officers inside the battalion.

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[Andrew Selous]

A lot of sorrow and anger has been expressed on both sides of the House this afternoon about the fact that it has been sadly necessary to make reductions in the Regular Army. We all understand that, but we all also understand that it was a necessary reaction to the £160 billion deficit with which this Government were confronted on taking office and the £38 billion black hole in the defence budget that there was at the same time.

We have heard a lot of praise for the reserves and for the Territorial Army throughout the debate, and that is right and proper.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Selous]

Not at the moment.

As a former Territorial soldier, I extend that praise to the regular forces alongside whom I have had the pride to serve. There are wonderful people in both the regular and reserve forces of whom this Parliament can be justifiably proud. It is absolutely right, however, that the Government have agreed to new clause 1. Like many others, I pay huge tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) for tabling it. Indeed, I went to see the Secretary of State yesterday to lobby for new clause 1 and I am delighted to see that it has been accepted by the Government.

New clause 1 is important because, in spite of the praise we have heard for the reserve forces and specifically for the TA from Members on both sides of the House, all Territorials will say that a certain amount of antipathy exists between regular and reserve forces as they serve our country together. It is absolutely right that the new clause should put into law independent scrutiny and independent control over what is happening to our reserve forces and the reserve forces estate, as well as the progress in recruitment and so on.

The Government had to take very difficult decisions, and they decided to move towards a Regular Army of 82,000 and an Army Reserve, as we will soon call it, of 30,000, making a total Army strength of 112,000. Incidentally, we would still have the fourth largest defence budget in the world and a considerable list of new equipment to go with those armed forces.

The point that has been made, first and most clearly by the Chair of the Select Committee on Defence, is that the reductions in the regular forces have already been made and are in place and on track to happen. There is no proposal to increase the number of regular soldiers from any quarter of this House. A prescient intervention by the Secretary of State on the shadow Secretary of State led the shadow Secretary of State to say that the Labour party had no plans to increase the number of regular soldiers. The question before the House is therefore how to press on and ensure that the reserve recruiting plan works and is successful. That is at the heart of what we need to do this afternoon, and the question is what will best help and bring about that recruitment effort. I listened to the wise words of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury, who said that any legislative impact that would put a halt to the plans to increase the reserve forces would be a hammer blow to the morale of the TA. We need certainty, and for everyone in this House to get behind the plans and ensure that we can successfully increase the strength of the Army Reserve from 19,000 to the 30,000 that we want.

We must remember that as recently as 1990 we had 72,000 Territorial soldiers, so it is entirely possible for us to move up to 30,000. It is an increase of only 20 extra Army Reserve recruits by parliamentary constituency and is an entirely achievable objective. I believe that we can bring that about. We need employers’ help, and I am encouraged by the fact that companies such as Carillion, Barclays and BT are very much getting behind the measures to make sure that we get the reserves that we need.

We will have full parliamentary scrutiny of the process; of that there is no doubt. We do not need new clause 3 to have proper parliamentary scrutiny of it. That is what the House is providing this afternoon, and that is what happens every month at Defence questions. It is also the role of the Select Committee on Defence to make sure that we have proper scrutiny.

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[Mr Kevan Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Ellwood]

I am afraid that I do not have time to give way to the hon. Gentleman. Of course, Labour also cut TA training completely in 2009, so it is difficult to take lessons from Labour Members. It is opportunistic to join this argument now, as others have said.

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[Mr Kevan Jones]

I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) for the constructive way in which he has engaged with the Opposition. We are not used to that—certainly not from the Secretary of State—on Bills or things to do with defence. The Committee as a whole gave a good and detailed examination of all aspects of the Bill. I accept that parts of it are still developing as we speak. Events this week have shown that with the withdrawal of one of the contractors for the proposed GoCo.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) for her work on the Bill. I also add my best wishes as she should hopefully become a grandmother for the second time in the next few hours. May I also thank the members of the Committee, the Clerks and the witnesses who came before us? I thank, too, the Minister’s hard-working civil servants who, at times, had to think on their feet when replying to some of the points that were made. I thank them on behalf of the Committee for their work.

I do not think that there is any disagreement in the House that we want to ensure that we procure the best equipment and support for members of our armed forces. In the debate this afternoon, it has been recognised that we should thank the men and women of our armed forces for the contribution they make to our safety. We often take that for granted, but we should never do so because they put their lives at risk to ensure that we can sleep safely in our beds at night.

The first part of the Bill concerns defence procurement. The Government have put forward two options: a GoCo or DE&S-plus. It was clear in Committee and is still quite clear that there is a determination within the MOD that a GoCo should be the way forward—

[Mr Philip Hammond]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry that the Secretary of State says that, but that was not the tenor of what we heard in Committee. Clearly, the withdrawal of one of the potential bidders has left serious questions about the future of the GoCo. We will certainly look closely at how the process goes forward.

[Mr Hammond]

For the sake of the record, I have said many times before in this House and say again today that we are open-minded about the choice between the GoCo and the DE&S-plus solution. We understand that the GoCo will bring certain advantages, but DE&S-plus might bring different advantages. We will weigh the two in the balance and select the solution that is in the best interests of the taxpayer and the armed forces.

[Mr Jones]

I am pleased to hear that, but I am also rather sceptical about what the Secretary of State says. Clearly, the emphasis in Committee and the mood music have been that the GoCo seems to be the main show in town, and there has been scant examination of what DE&S-plus will do. We must ensure that as the process goes ahead and the Bill goes to the other place proper scrutiny is maintained. Not only is this a major change to how we procure defence equipment in this country but it will have an impact on our relationships with international allies.

[Mr Dunne]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s final point: this clearly needs to be scrutinised properly. However, let me gently make the point to him that part 1 of the Bill inevitably focused on a GoCo rather than DE&S-plus because DE&S-plus does not need legislation whereas a GoCo does.

[Mr Jones]

I accept that point, but the mood music coming out of the MOD seems to be that there is a concentration on the GoCo. We will certainly wait and see how things develop.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

We have been here before with such privatisations, but surely the concept of competition is stretched to absurdity when there is only one bidder. We risk demoralising the staff we employ at the moment; today, we did not even reach the part of the Bill that would have given them the assurances that are needed about their long-term employment prospects.

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. As the process goes forward, there is obviously a lot of concern among people who work in defence procurement. It is important that things are brought to a conclusion so that they can have some reassurance. It will be interesting to see how the process goes ahead with just one bidder. We need to ensure that that is scrutinised in the other place, as I am sure it will be. I hope that the Minister will keep us informed in the House about that ongoing process.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

One of the key concerns was that if a new provider was created to run the GoCo it would effectively be difficult for another provider ever to come in and take it on. Are not those concerns aggravated by the fact that we have only one bidder going through the process to start with?

[Mr Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and for his work in Committee. He raises an interesting point, as one of the concerns raised in Committee was what would happen after the nine-year process as regards renegotiating the contract. We will now have only one contractor who, if successful, will certainly be in pole position come the renegotiation at the end of the contract, whether or not any others are able to bid. We must consider those issues very carefully in the coming months as the process develops.

The other issues on which we spent a lot of time and about which there are still concerns are those on intellectual property and single-source procurement, about which we had numerous discussions in Committee. I think that industry still has concerns on those points. Part of the process is about not only reassuring the work force but ensuring confidence about working with the defence sector, because it is a major employer in this country. It is also important to ensure that we are at the leading edge of not only defence technology but security technology. Full involvement of the sector throughout the process will be very important. I think that the Bill will have an interesting passage through the other place.

We spent most of the afternoon on the reserves part of the Bill. I reiterate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), the shadow Secretary of State: Labour Members—and Members generally—look with pride on the contribution that reservists make to our armed forces. I have seen them at first hand, in both Iraq and Afghanistan; they are very brave men and women, doing a fantastic job on our behalf.

On the process ahead, I welcome the Government’s slight change of heart on producing an annual report. May I say thank you to the Secretary of State for including mental health in that report? If he wishes for any assistance with the organisation involved, in terms of how it approaches that, I am quite willing to engage, or point him in the direction of other organisations that will be interested in knowing how mental health can be seen as a priority, because there is an issue, whether we like it or not, with reservists and mental health. I know that the Government have followed through on work that we did in government and have added to that, in terms of making sure that veterans’ mental health is seen as a priority.

On the overall position of reservists, after this afternoon’s debate, I would say that the jury was still out, but we did get some clarification from the Secretary of State on the reduction in the Regular Army. Remember, when the strategic defence and security review was first announced by the Prime Minister, there was to have been a reduction of 7,000; then the figure went down from 95,000 to 80,000. I think the Secretary of State was very candid this afternoon: that was about money, not about what was best for our armed forces.

[Mr Philip Hammond]

Or about spending it in different ways.

[Mr Jones]

Well, we can have a debate about that; the Secretary of State still bandies around the £38 billion figure. What he and many others seem to forget is that there was also the impact on the defence budget of the 9% decrease that this Government brought in as part of the SDSR.

On monitoring how the changes go forward, the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) has done a fantastic job. He has been an assiduous champion of reservists for many years. When we were in government, he worked closely with the then Secretary of State to try to improve the lot of reservists. He raises an interesting point about the issues between the regulars and the reserve forces. There has been, in some quarters of the Army, a view that somehow the reserves are second-best. It will be important to ensure that that is not the case going forward.

It was interesting to hear General Sir Peter Wall say that the proposals were the way forward. When we were in government, he was part of the senior command of the Army that recommended the £20 million cut for the reserve forces. It is important that senior officers in the Regular Army fully buy into the process, because that is how we will make sure that we have the joined-up approach that we require.

The Secretary of State has moved a lot this afternoon; he has gone from holding the position that we should not have annual reports to giving a commitment to them. However, we need parliamentary time, so that the report does not just sit on a shelf in the Library, but is debated on the Floor of the House. I tell him gently that the more engagement he has, not only with the Opposition, but with his party’s Back Benchers, the better, when it comes to making sure that the best intentions that we all have for our armed forces are realised.

The nonsense that we are still going through—we are being barred from speaking to senior officers, and barred from military bases—is not helpful. When I had a role in the Ministry of Defence, I took the view that the more engagement that parliamentarians, irrespective of political party, have with members of the armed forces, the better—and not only for MPs’ understanding; members of the armed forces also get a lot out of coming to understand how this place and politicians operate.

[Mr Hammond]

For the record, we have, as far as I am aware, arranged for the Opposition Front-Bench team and individual members of it to visit military bases.

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[Mr Jones]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Hammond]

I am sure we have. If the hon. Gentleman wants to contact me—I have said this to the shadow Secretary of State—and let me know where they would like to go and when they would like to go, we will facilitate it.

[Mr Jones]

That is a very good change of heart. [Interruption.] It is a change of heart; that is not what has been going on over the past few years since the right hon. Gentleman has been Secretary of State. I know it is an issue that the Chairman of the Select Committee has raised as well. I take that at face value and we will test the system, as the Secretary of State has made the offer on the Floor of the House.

We will not press the motion to a vote—[Interruption.] The Minister is chuntering away. The shadow Secretary of State wrote to the chiefs of the armed forces, wanting to meet them, and I have here a note from this afternoon which says that the MOD just rang the shadow Secretary of State’s office to say that the pre-arranged meetings with several chiefs have been cancelled because there is a change in protocol and he must now arrange the meetings through the Secretary of State’s office. Under the old process, the request would be made and the Minister would sign it off at the end. I know that he is paranoid about leaks, and the process is not helping.

I conclude by wishing the Bill well when it goes to the other place.