Armed Forces Readiness and Defence Equipment

Debate between Lord Beamish and Julian Lewis

Thursday 21st March 2024 Commons Chamber

[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.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Julian Lewis

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

It is better than he did in Committee when he called me a hypocrite, Madam Deputy Speaker, but if he listens to what I am saying, he will know that I am not saying that. I know that his attention span is not very good, and he does not tend to listen. What he tends to do is just stick to what he has in front of him and his view of the world, rather than hearing what people are saying. The issue is—[Interruption.] Well, he can say “brilliant” and chunter as much as he likes, but this is the issue—the delays that are taking place because of the investigations.

I have referred to Judge Blackett, and the Minister was there when the evidence was taken. Judge Blackett is a just-retired senior judge of the service justice system, and he said:

“The Bill is effectively looking at the wrong end of the telescope. It is looking at the prosecution end, and you have got to remember that you do not prosecute until you investigate—and you have got to investigate. This will not stop people being investigated and it will not stop people being re-investigated and investigated again. Lots of investigations do not go anywhere, but the people who are investigated do not see that.”—[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 120.]

That came up when we took evidence from Major Campbell. I will put it on record again that his case was a disgrace, because it took 17 years, but this Bill will do nothing to speed up such cases or to ensure that reinvestigations do not occur. That is the key problem. The problem is not the prosecutions, because their number is very small.

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

I have put in three written questions about this Bill, and yesterday I had answers to them. Two of the answers were helpful, but one, on the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making, was not. I was trying to establish how many investigations had not resulted in prosecutions, and I could not seem to get an answer, yet that is central to the whole problem. The core of the problem is not the small number who get prosecuted but the large number who get investigated.

[Mr Jones]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct. That came out in evidence that we took throughout the Committee. The issue is not the number of prosecutions but the number of investigations and how we can speed up the length of time they take.

The problem is that the Ministry seems to have a deaf ear when it comes to recognising that we need to address the issue around investigations, which is what new clause 1 would do. It would ensure that we had judicial oversight of the investigations. We can see what we have at the moment from the example of Major Campbell’s case, which went on and on. New clause 1 states that after a certain period of time, the evidence should be put before a judge to see whether there was a case to answer. Clearly, if the evidence did not meet the test and the case was going nowhere, it would get thrown out there and then. Alternatively, it could be decided that the case needed further investigation, but at least that would ensure that, after six months, there was some judicial oversight of the investigation. That would be a way of ensuring that these investigations did not go on for a long time.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Lord Beamish and Julian Lewis

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman, with whom I worked so closely on the Defence Committee, as always gets to the heart of the matter. He says that, indeed, we have made reference in the context of Northern Ireland to numbers and scale in precisely the way we are seeking to be able to do here. Whether something is then made public is always a matter for debate and negotiation between the ISC and the agency concerned, but where it cannot be made public, that is where the ISC in a sense comes into its own. We exist to be able to see things that for good reasons cannot be made public, but we can then at least give assurance to Parliament that we have seen what cannot be made public and we are reasonably satisfied with it, and that is what this is all about.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The reason for not giving that figure is clearly that it would give an advantage to those we are working against—for example, in Northern Ireland—through an indication of the scale of the CHIS. Could the right hon. Gentleman clarify the situation and highlight to the Committee that we would look at the numbers, but that we have powers to look at individual cases, as we have done in the past, if we have concerns about them?

[Dr Lewis]

Yes. What it is important to remember and, it must be said, what has not always been remembered in recent times, are the provisions of the Justice and Security Act 2013. That Act, among other things, said that the Committee would have greater powers to “require” the agencies to give certain information. Prior to that, it could only “request” the agencies to do so. The question is: will we have the power to be assured of getting these figures, or are we going to be able only to ask for them and perhaps not get them? The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: if we saw something that we did not like the look of, even if we did not have the power to require that particular piece of information in order to delve further, we could at least request it. For many years, that was the only basis on which the Committee could operate anyway.