Armed Forces Readiness and Defence Equipment

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I really welcome this debate, in which five former Defence Ministers are speaking. That is probably a record—certainly in recent years. I very much thank the Chair of the Defence Committee for laying out the global challenges this country faces and some of the capability concerns. Given the expertise in the Chamber, I know that we will hear more about that.

I stand here as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, which sometimes feels a bit like the second Defence Committee because of the amount of time we spend examining the vast expenditure that this country makes on defence. Taxpayers give this money to the Government trusting that it will be spent well, but sadly all too often we see that it is not spent as well as it should be. We see money going in but we do not see the capability coming out that we require. The PAC examines that defence spending and the delivery; our job is to look at the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of how taxpayers’ money is spent by Government. As I say, the Ministry of Defence too often falls short on that.

The Committee has huge concerns about the MOD’s ability to deliver projects on time and to budget. This report is only one of our latest on the subject. Just because we have war paint on ships or something is very important, interesting and exciting technology to support our men and women on the frontline does not mean that it should not be treated like any other major project in Government and be managed well and properly. There is no point in having something perfect but late if our frontline personnel need it. As our report highlights, recent global events, which I will not go into, as the Chair of the Defence Committee has outlined them, throw into sharp focus why it is so vital that we deliver on time and that we have the capability, including industrial capability, to ramp up when something, such as munitions, for example, are used apace.

The PAC has examined the annual equipment plan from the MOD for more than 12 years. We have done that throughout the time I have been a member of the Committee, for the past nine years of which I have had the privilege of being its Chair. The defence equipment plan is the 10-year programme for the capability that the MOD says it requires and it lays out how that will be funded, and where the challenges and gaps in funding are. All bar last year’s plan were deemed unaffordable, but the PAC took the view that even in the year when the plan from the MOD came out as affordable, it was based on assumptions that were not realistic, and we did not believe it was fully affordable.

In simple terms, affordability is about the gap between the capability the plan lays out and the money available. As the plan covers 10 years, there have been times when Ministers, including some of the former Ministers present and perhaps even the current Minister, might have come up with reasons for that. They say, “Over 10 years, it is fine. We’ll juggle it a bit. We will balance a bit. We’ll get efficiency savings here and there.” We have seen those arguments and excuses far too often, and the efficiencies do not arrive or issues arise and defence programmes are put off and delayed. By delaying them we see a reprofiling of the costs, but no real reduction in them, and we see those chickens coming home to roost.

This year, the gap between the capability required and what is affordable is £16.9 billion—so it is nearly £17 billion over the 10-year period. We can then add in what the Army would deliver. It is perhaps worth my explaining that for some odd reason—the PAC has taken a strong view on this and even the permanent secretary at the MOD has acknowledged that there was an anomaly—when the Commands and the MOD put in their costs for the programmes, most of them put in the full costs of all the capability required, but the Army puts in only the costs of what it could afford. If we add in the capability that the Army actually requires, we are adding a further £12 billion to that nearly £17 billion, thus making the gap even bigger. There has been a clear deterioration in affordability. It is fair to say that £10 billion of that is because of inflationary costs—we partly know the reasons for that, but I am not going to go into them now—and about £2 billion is to do with foreign exchange costs. Again, the PAC examines those regularly with the MOD and the Treasury, but however we hedge it there will be some challenge on foreign exchange because of the nature of some of our defence procurement.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that that has been made worse by the MOD’s tendency to purchase off-the-shelf solutions from the United States in dollars, which is now accounting for a huge amount of the defence budget? As she says, even with hedging, this is a deadweight around the defence budget.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point, and we could almost have a whole debate about that. We do not have time to go into the full detail today, but I will touch on our defence industrial strategy. That is what a lot of this comes down to; if we are buying things off the shelf, it can sometimes be more cost-effective, but we need to be careful and cautious, because the longer those projects are for, the greater the risk of foreign exchange challenges. There is also sometimes a risk to our own sovereign capability and the longevity of some of our defence industries.

We recognise that, with our allies, we work in an international world on this. So there is no straightforward answer, but defence industrial strategy is an area that not only the MOD but the whole of Government should be looking at, as it is vital. Both the Chancellor and shadow Chancellor talk about growing the economy, and our defence industries are based in areas where, if we could up the skills and jobs available, it could provide a major boost to the economy. So there are a lot of opportunities there.

The MOD has not credibly demonstrated how it will manage its funding to deliver the military capabilities the Government want. Our latest report says that they need to get “firmer control of defence procurement” because of this very large deficit in respect of the capability requirements needed. The budget has increased, and I am sure the Minister will stand up to tell us how much extra money is going into defence, but this is about not just the money, but how it is managed. The budget has increased by £46.3 billion over the next 10-year period compared with what was set out in last year’s equipment plan. As I said, the PAC has warned that the deficit is even bigger than expected, so that extra budget will be taken up by the deficit if it is not managed down. Part of the reason for that deficit is inflation, but another major impact on it is the costs of the Defence Nuclear Organisation, which is responsible for the vital nuclear deterrent. Those costs have increased by £38.2 billion since last year’s plan.

One of our Committee’s other concerns is that the MOD has been putting off making decisions about cancelling or reprofiling programmes. Reprofiling is not always a good thing, but sometimes we have to trim according to what is necessary. If the MOD cannot afford the plan, it should take a hard decision, but it has optimistically assumed that the plan would be affordable if the Government fulfilled their long-term aspiration to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence each year, despite there being no guarantee that that will happen. Of course, in an election year there is not even a guarantee as to which party will be in government to consider that. We know, and the Defence Committee will know even more than the PAC, how much the MOD is increasingly reliant on the UK’s allies to protect our national interests. That means that we also have to play our part by making sure that we are delivering that.

For all the time that I have served on the PAC— 13 years this year—the MOD has been led by optimism bias, and it is now pressing on based on not optimism but the sniff of optimism, as there is so little left in that approach that will deliver. We must call that out and call a spade a spade, by saying that the MOD can deliver only what is affordable. So either the money goes in or the MOD trims what it is trying to do, because the approach of trying to do everything all at once and not being able to afford it is just not going to work.

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

I begin by joining the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin), in thanking the men and women of our armed forces—we should never forget their dedication. It is often said that the first duty of government is to keep the nation safe and protect its citizens, but we have a Conservative party that has admitted that it has “hollowed out” defence. We have had a return to war in Europe and growing threats around the world, as has been explained, and we now need a clear-eyed vision of what we need to do in defence. It is about deterrence—there has been a lot of talk about warfighting, but the success of defence is in deterring action from happening.

We need to recognise how we have got to where we are today. I hear all the calls from Conservative Members for increases in defence expenditure. I do not question those individuals’ commitment or dedication, because I know that many of them are very committed individuals who believe in defence, as I do. However, I find it a little ironic that between 2010 and 2016, the defence budget in this country was cut by 18%. Even with the increase, the defence budget is still 7% lower than it was in 2010, and the Budget on 6 March included a cut in the defence budget. I hear all the stirring cries for increasing the defence budget, but we did not get into this situation by accident.

In 2010, we had a Conservative-led coalition Government who tried to scare the public by saying that they inherited a £36 billion black hole in the defence budget. That was absolute nonsense. The figure came from a 2009 NAO report on the equipment budget that said that there was a £6 billion black hole in that budget, and that if we had flat cash for the next 10 years, the figure would be £30 billion. The spin doctors added another £6 billion to that figure, and it became the myth that was reiterated.

That myth masked what the Government were really up to, which was slashing the defence budget over that period, and we are still seeing the consequences of those decisions. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), whom I respect, talked about a 1930s moment. I agree that we are in a 1930s moment—the similarities are there. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Conservative Government cut defence expenditure, including Winston Churchill, who admitted it in later life.

[Mr Francois]

He was Chancellor.

[Mr Jones]

As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he cut defence expenditure, so there are parallels there, but not the ones that the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford is referring to.

[John Spellar]

Another key feature of that era was the Treasury’s 10-year rule of basing defence expenditure on the assumption that there would not be a war in Europe within the next 10 years, which rather unravelled at the end of the 1930s.

[Mr Jones]

It did. If we look back, the common theme —it is a matter of fact, whether people like it or not—is that we have defence cuts under Conservative Governments, and when Labour is in power we maintain or increase the defence budget.

[Mr Francois]

I hope this does not come across as nit-picking—it is important. The 10-year rule, which was a rolling 10 years, was not just a Treasury policy: it was the policy of the entire Government, and it was not rescinded by the incoming Labour Government in the 1920s. It was the policy of the whole Government, and it was only rescinded in the mid-1930s, a few years after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. It is important to get that right.

[Mr Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman has got that on the record. I am not going to get into a history lesson about the 10-year rule—I think the history books tell the story—but we have seen what happened from 2010 onwards.

We have had a cut of 40,000 personnel in our armed forces, and it is not just about numbers; it is about experience. Individuals were made compulsorily redundant. If I had made people compulsorily redundant when I was a Defence Minister, The Sun and the right-wing press in this country would have been shouting from the rooftops, but they did absolutely nothing, and we lost experience. One in five of our ships was removed, as were more than 200 aircraft, and the satisfaction rating among our armed forces personnel is now below 50%. We have had a system over the past few years that has wasted money, as we have chronicled in our report, and we actually now have the £30 billion black hole in our equipment budget that was predicted in 2009, as the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), has referred to.

This is not about whether the defence budget is 2%, 3% or 5%. It is about looking at how we have got into this situation, and how we change it—how we face the challenges that confront us today. Whichever party is in government after the next election will have to face those challenges, but we have to get away from British exceptionalism. We have great ambitions to be a global power, like some kind of imperial power. I am sorry, but we are not. We can continue that myth ad infinitum, but unless we link the resource to the ambition, it is not going to work.

For the past few years, we have had the nonsense slogan of “global Britain”—some pre-imperialist view of what we are doing around the world. I am sorry, but it is absolute nonsense. We have to look at what we can do to protect our own defence. The idea that we are going to be a major player in anything that happens in the south-east of the South China sea—that having two offshore patrol vessels based in Singapore is going to deter the Chinese—is nonsense. If anything happens there, frankly, any commitment that we could give is like a gnat on the backside of an elephant compared with what the Americans would be able to do. We have to be realistic about that.

What do we need to do? We need to look at what we must deliver as part of our NATO commitments. We also need to get away from the myth—and it is a myth, in our Army in particular—that we will deliver a force of divisional strength under any NATO commitment. We cannot do it now, we have not been able to do it for quite a few years, and we just need to be realistic about that. We need to sit down with NATO and look at what we can contribute to European defence. Clearly, the nuclear deterrent is a key part of that. However, do we, for example, need a full spectrum Army? No, we do not. We need to plug into our NATO allies, and ask what we can deliver well as part of the overall defence against the threat coming not only from Russia in Europe, but increasingly from China in the north Atlantic as we get global warming and the opening of sea lanes.

There is an idea that we will be sending aircraft carriers around the world. No, we will not. We need to commit them to NATO, and that means some very tough decisions. It also means that we need a mindset change. We have to be honest with the public about this, and say that we will not be able to do everything. There are then some hard decisions to be taken about the armed forces. For example, we should say to the Army, “We’re not going to be doing that, but we are going to do this very well. We will dovetail that into NATO commitments, and actually make a real difference.” There are big decisions that will have to be taken by any Government, whoever gets in after the next election.

Please let us get away from the myth—and it is a myth—that we will be going around the world and intervening in every single conflict. For example, look at the air strikes on the Houthis in the last few weeks. We have contributed four aircraft because we want to be seen to be alongside the Americans, but I would ask: what is the strategy for doing that? There is no strategy. Okay, we have bombed the Houthis, but is that going to resolve the situation? No, it is not. Does it show that Britain is a global power? No, it does not. Frankly, we do not have the resources, unless someone will say that the defence budget is going to be 3%, 4%, 5%, 6% or 7%, but no Government are going to commit to that.

I say to Conservative Members and the commentariat in our right-wing press that they should just be honest with the British people about what we can do. We can and do have a valuable role to play in NATO and we have willing partners that want to work with us. I am certainly very excited about Sweden and Finland joining, although we need to make sure that we actually get those commitments. As I say, some hard decisions have to be taken and there are some home truths for our armed forces. As the Chair of the PAC said, there are capabilities that we will just have to get out of. We will have to say, “We’re not going to do that, but we’re going to do this and we’re going to do it well, and we are going to contribute,” and that will maximise our influence.

On China, people ask: do we just forget about the South China sea? No, we do not. We use our strong diplomacy, and our great and fantastic abilities with technology and other things in those areas, but it is not about deploying people or equipment out there. Frankly, the sooner we get the reality of such a wake-up call, the better. I will always call, and I have always called, for increased defence expenditure, but I will not do so if it is just to try to plug a vision that will never ever be achieved. We need to make sure that we spend that money well.

That leads on to the point about skills raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar). We need to see any defence expenditure as potential growth in our economy. However, we are not doing that if we are giving contracts to the United States, or to Spain for fleet solid support ships, and not thinking about growing our defence industries here. I accept that there has to be international collaboration, but we must have give and take. The idea that the French would ever give an FSS ship contract to a Spanish shipyard, frankly, is just—

[John Spellar]

Laughable.

[Mr Jones]

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

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

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Jones]

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

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

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

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

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

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[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I echo the positive words that have been spoken already this afternoon about the reports from the Public Accounts and Defence Committees, and it is timely that we get all this out into the open. In the Budget earlier this month, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that defence spending “will rise to 2.5% as soon as economic conditions allow.”—[Official Report, 6 March 2024; Vol. 746, c. 846.]

What indications has the Minister had from the Prime Minister and Chancellor about when economic conditions might allow? What are the conditions that might allow, and when might they be met?

This week the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), gave an interview to the i newspaper, in which she described “big nasties” facing public spending. She talked about “slow politics”, where decisions are made with a long-term strategic perspective at the forefront. That is especially pertinent when it comes to defence capabilities. As we are entering a period of global uncertainty, it is concerning to read in the PAC report that there are glaring discrepancies around how spending is identified for single services. For example, the report highlights the way that planned spending is reported. Whereas the Royal Navy includes all costs in its plans, creating an on-paper deficit of more than £15 billion, the Army includes only what estimates it can afford, resulting in a running deficit of about £1.2 billion. Had the Army followed the same procedures as the Royal Navy, its deficit would soar to over £13 billion. Such inconsistency in budget reporting is, I am sure, not a deliberate lack of transparency, but it can bring about distrust when it comes to planned defence spending.

The Defence Committee’s “Ready for War?” report stresses the need to replenish our much depleted munitions stockpiles. It highlights that there has been a “hollowing out” over the past 14 years—we have heard that talked about, including from the Dispatch Boxes—but that has been brought into sharp relief by an emboldened, aggressive, nationalist Russian state. If we cannot co-ordinate defence spending in a clear manner, we risk weakening the perception of our defence capabilities. The issue of the budget deficit goes further, with the Committee highlighting a £16.9 billion deficit over 10 years, due in part to rising inflation. We know that defence inflation is greater than other measures of inflation, partly because a lot of our defence equipment is imported from overseas, particularly the United States.

There is a 62% increase in spending on the Defence Nuclear Organisation, and the report states that defence spending would need to increase to around 2.5% of GDP to plug that gap. Ministers are entrenching the uncertainty around budget planning, meaning that important projects risk being deprioritised. At present, the defence budget is thought to be about 2.1%, and some measures try to include our defence commitment to Ukraine, so that it might rise to 2.25%. The MOD said that the difference between 2.25% and 2.5% of GDP is about £6 billion or £7 billion. There are important reasons why that increase might be necessary. Although we spend 2.1% on defence as a whole, around 6% of that goes to fund our nuclear capabilities. Prior to 2010, the UK’s strategic nuclear deterrent was kept out of Ministry of Defence spending measures and held centrally, whereas now it is all included in the defence budget, meaning that our conventional spending has seen a great deal of squeeze over the last decade-plus.

By failing to invest in our armed forces over a sustained period, we have heard cries of operational readiness being affected, and people crying about overstretch. I recall that word from my own service about 20 years ago, when people were declaring that the armed forces were running hot and that they were overstretched. That is why it is essential for Governments to know how much they can commit their armed forces. That comes back to what we used to call the defence planning assumptions about how many operational overseas deployments might take place simultaneously. Up until 2015, those defence planning assumptions were published, but since 2015 they have not been published and have been very much held behind a cloak. I see no real reason from a security perspective or from the point of view of what our adversaries might think, for keeping those withheld. As was pointed out to the Defence Committee, our adversaries probably know our capabilities well, and they will be analysing our intentions. It is arguably better to be transparent about those defence planning assumptions if that means a reduction in the call on the armed forces by other Departments of Government.

In recent years, we have seen that a lot, with Departments having sought to use the armed forces for military aid to the civil authorities, whether for ambulance strikes or to cover for the fire service. The armed forces have been pulled in for those roles and taken away from training, which is essential to their mission. Transparency is very much required.

When that is combined with the persistent issues of repeated cuts and reductions in personnel, our armed forces could be in an even more challenging place than is currently suggested. We really need to sort this out. The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) referred to the recent speech by the Secretary of State for Defence about moving from a post-war period to a pre-war era. I was alarmed to hear that speech. I am an advocate for the Roosevelt phrase,

“speak softly and carry a big stick”.

In talking about moving from post-war to pre-war, I felt that he was doing quite the reverse: investing no new money in defence while speaking with a rather loud mouth.

It strikes me that the Defence Secretary is not doing enough to advocate for spending in private, because he is doing it in public through leaked letters to the Chancellor, as reported in The Daily Telegraph. His predecessor, the right hon. Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), did the honourable and decent thing by stepping away from his Cabinet role when he could no longer tolerate Cabinet collective responsibility in relation to defence spending.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the hon. Member agree that the strategy the Defence Secretary is employing has nothing to do with defence but is possibly to do with a future bid to become leader of the Conservative party?

[Richard Foord]

I grateful to the right hon. Member. While I will not speculate on the Defence Secretary’s intentions, I certainly think that has had the effect of putting him out of step with the Chancellor and the Prime Minister such that he is no longer engaged in collective responsibility.

It seems to me that by talking up increases in the defence budget in cash terms rather than real terms, the Government are hiding behind recent high inflation. I will give the House a specific example. Following the publication of the PAC report on 8 March, the Prime Minister’s spokesperson, who was asked to respond to that report, replied:

“We are ensuring that we have the largest defence budget in history”.

That is so much spin as to be like a vortex—it is way off to suggest that. As we heard from the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), during the cold war, defence spending was north of 6% of GDP. I am not advocating for defence spending to return to anything like those levels, because I recognise that we were dealing then with an eastern Europe in the grips of Russia and very much surrounded by and part of the Warsaw pact, with all its contributions assisting the Warsaw pact inventory, whereas now our spending is very much contributing to NATO’s defence of Europe and the deterrence of Moscow. I would understand the phrase “as soon as economic conditions allow” if we were talking about an absolute cost—for example, the cost of a frigate or a platform, with a price tag—but we are not; we are talking about a relative cost. The Government need to set out what those economic conditions are.

Finally, I turn to land. As we have heard rehearsed in the House many times, the Army is being reduced from 82,500 to 73,000 soldiers. Earlier, Mr Deputy Speaker talked about the considerable expertise in this place, but the greatest defence experience is probably in the other place. Those who rose to the top of their professions in the armed forces now speak with the greatest wisdom on defence. I would therefore like to quote from some of them, starting with three former Chiefs of the General Staff.

In January, Lord Richard Dannatt said:

“The bottom line is numbers do matter… It is a fact that at 73,000 the British Army has never been smaller”.

In March 2021, Lord David Richards said that “mass still matters”. In May 2022, General Sir Nick Carter said that

“in the order of 80,000”

soldiers are required to ensure that the UK could field a full division as part of a combined NATO force.

Although the current Chief of the General Staff is somewhat restricted in what he can say while in post, in June 2022 he said that the UK was facing a “1937 moment”, and that

“it would be perverse if the CGS was advocating reducing the size of the Army as a land war rages in Europe”.

I firmly advocate for the Army to be restored to that 83,000 figure. When will those economic conditions be met so that we might see 2.5% spent on defence?

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[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Well, this was a debate that certainly went in directions I never thought it would go.

It is always a privilege to follow the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), who may be in a different party but is a very good friend on the Defence Committee. I commend the report from the Committee, of which I am once again a member. There are a few things we do not agree on, but on the vast majority of issues we do agree. That brings me back to the old Scottish nation’s motto, which is “In Defens”. I am very much akin to that. I also share some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Rochdale (George Galloway) on how we do not push ourselves into conflicts that are unnecessary. I may come back to that in a few moments.

I want to come back to the points made by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) on background and family. I have said umpteen times in the Chamber that my brother served in Iraq and had two terms in Afghanistan as a reservist. I will come back to the specific point on people in the armed forces later. The right hon. Gentleman talked about his dad. My dad is 99. I am lucky my dad is still here. He survived the worst aerial bombardment these islands have ever seen. It was only after about 75 years that the Government recognised that it was the worst aerial bombardment the UK had seen during the second world war. Last Wednesday, I was able to attend, as I try to every year, the 83rd commemoration of the Clydebank Blitz, which took place on 13 and 14 March 1941. I also stood at one of the mass graves in Clydebank on Saturday to lay a wreath on behalf of my constituents. I do so with privilege and in honour of our family of survivors.

I want to pick up on three points relating to readiness in terms of people, partnership and position, and how they link critically to the word resilience, which I think I heard some Members mention. The right hon. Members for North Durham (Mr Jones) and for Warley (John Spellar) are probably sick to death of me talking over several years about resilience, but it is inextricably linked to what readiness should be all about. Let me talk about people first and how resilient are the armed forces.

It is a pity that the hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) cannot be here today—I did tell her that I would mention her today—because she chaired a sub-committee on women in the armed forces, which exposed some of the most profoundly difficult questions and scrutiny in Parliament about recruitment and retention that the armed forces have ever had to face. I hate the term “ordinary ranks”. What does “ordinary” mean—people on the frontline who have to go over the ditch? There is nothing ordinary about that. As I said earlier, my brother did it as a reservist, but the report exposed dreadful questions about women and members of black and ethnic minority communities. Why are we not retaining or even recruiting them? Why, moreover, are young men not wanting to join up? This returns me to the issue of terms and conditions, which I have often talked about.

I remember arguing with a former Chair of the Defence Committee—he is not here, but I see that the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) has turned up—who was also a former Minister. He had said that members of the armed forces were not employees or workers. That may be the case in law, but they still deliver a service. If we want to retain people, it is critically important that we copy what so many of our NATO allies do in recognising the value and worth of members of the forces—whether in the Royal Navy, the Army or even the Royal Air Force—and recognising their rights, one of which is the right to representation. My party and I have always said that we believe the armed forces require a representative body like the Police Federation.

The kingdom of Denmark, for instance, which paid the blood price in Iraq and Afghanistan, has a very robust armed forces representative body. The problem there is not about recruitment, but about how in God’s name you persuade people to leave the armed forces in Denmark, because it is such a good—wait for it—employer. They are still willing to go over the ditch and take up the cudgels on behalf of their country. That brings us to the question of how we should deal with people here in the UK who may be over-reliant on charitable organisations, which, of course, are very well-meaning and committed.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I agree with the points that the hon. Gentleman is making, but I think that there must be a real, radical revolution in the way in which the armed forces not only recruit but employ people. The number of 18-year-olds is falling. We are going to need more flexible employment models enabling people to leave, come back in, have career breaks and so forth. Unless we do that, we will not be able to persuade them to join our armed forces.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I am glad that his party has joined mine—I think; I am not sure whether this is still a Labour manifesto commitment—in recommending the introduction of an armed forces representative body. However, a critical issue is how the skills that already exist can be utilised. I cannot believe that I am going to use the word “emulate” when speaking of the United States, but that flexibility is emulated by the United States and also by many of our other NATO allies.

When it comes to readiness and having people on the frontline in the physical armed forces, I am not going to play the numbers game, because this is a political and philosophical issue. It is about how we retain and recruit. I think that fundamental rights for members of the armed forces should be enshrined in law. They should not need to go to those very well-meaning charitable organisations to receive assistance with housing, with their mental health, and even with their physical health. Members of the Danish armed forces who have suffered an injury do not go to a special unit; they go to a Danish national hospital like every other Danish citizen, because there they will benefit from the delivery of a robust public service.

That, in turn, brings me to the way in which the armed forces and, critically, the Army in particular have been challenged during the pandemic. Some former members of the Defence Committee who are not present today kept going on about the need for the Army to step up to the plate in dealing with resilience. The right hon. Member for North Durham has heard me talk about resilience in Committee. It is not, in my view, the role of the Army to pick up civilian action. During the pandemic, the Army in England and Wales had to do that in respect of the Nightingale hospitals, not just in terms of logistics and design but in terms of the actual physical infrastructure. Why was that? It was because most parts of the NHS procurement processes to build the Nightingale hospitals had been privatised years ago. We had taken a very physical state ownership of that civil structure of resilience and readiness out of the hands of the Government and the NHS and given it to private contractors, who have made billions on the back of it.

Let me give a Scottish example, the Louisa Jordan Hospital. The Army stepped up to the plate in helping with the logistics, but they were not required to build the internal structure of the Louisa Jordan. Most of it was in the Scottish conference centre. That internal structure was built through NHS Scotland procurement, because it was fit for purpose and ready to play its part. When we are talking about people, we should bear in mind that readiness is not just about members of the armed forces; it is also about the larger civilian infrastructure.

The right hon. Member for Warley is not present now, but he and I—along with, I think, the right hon. Member for New Forest East—travelled to Washington some years ago with the Defence Committee. Part of our purpose was to understand where our infrastructure was. How, for example, do we transfer, through partnerships between states—critically, within the continent of Europe —a division, or tanks, across bridges and roads which, since the end of the cold war, are no longer equal in terms of weight or infrastructure? How difficult is it to move a tank from a port to, say, technically, the eastern front if that is required? Partnerships of that kind have been allowed to disappear in the post-cold war era.

However, there are other important partnerships, such as the United Nations with its peacekeeping role. It was disappointing that not only the United Kingdom but other countries have had to pull out of Mali, at the instigation of the Malian Government, in the last couple of years. That peacekeeping role is a crucial part of the infrastructure of maintaining international order grounded in the rule-based system. I was also disappointed by the Government’s decision to postpone, or put into abeyance, their investment and funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Palestine on the basis of a very small amount of information, or accusation, from the Government of the state of Israel in respect of the conflict in Gaza. I hope that the Government recognise the value and worth of that partnership in trying to quell some of the many big problems that are faced in that part of the world.

I think I have had my 10 minutes, but let me end by saying a little about the European Union in relation to partnership and position. I was glad to hear that the official Opposition may now be considering an improved relationship with the EU. We in the Scottish National party believe it is important to have a mutual defence agreement with the EU. As for the question of position, I am a Euro-Atlanticist, and I think it important for us to reposition ourselves, away from the issues of the Indo-Pacific.

I agree with the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) about the nuclear proposition. I think that the hon. Member for Rochdale and I are the only Members present who oppose nuclear weapons, but I think there is general agreement on the need to take the deterrent into another budget heading so that we have a full understanding of what that two-point-whatever percentage of GDP is. I hope that the Government will be able to respond to that in the debate today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kevan Jones]

No, I did not. If the Minister had actually listened, what I said is that our contribution in the event of a crisis in the South China sea would be a gnat on the backside of an elephant. That is very different from what the Minister said.

[James Cartlidge]

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

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