Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The problem is that today’s policy is driven by a belief that a key way to respond to the challenges we face is to increase our intervention upstream so that, by providing aid to poor and dysfunctional countries, we reduce the causes of tension and thus our need for hard power. My response is twofold.

First, there is little evidence, despite committing the massive figure of £13 billion of public money, that such soft power delivers the effect sought. We have provided more than £1 billion to assist refugee camps to cope with the Syrian crisis, yet there has been palpably no reduction in the tidal wave of migrants, whether economic migrants or those genuinely fleeing persecution. I support what the Government are doing in Syria, which is noble and right. We should seek to maintain refugees near their country of origin, not to uproot them and import them into the continent of Europe. I strongly support that policy.

Secondly, there seems to be a quaint idea that the exercise of soft power offers an alternative to hard power. Make no mistake, Mr Speaker: without serious hard power, your soft power is completely non-existent. As Theodore Roosevelt said, it is better to “carry a big stick”, and then you can speak softly.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Does he agree that the two budgets are not mutually exclusive? As things such as Operation Gritrock have shown, military capability gives us choices to deliver humanitarian goals.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I could not agree more. There is an argument that we should combine all such budgets. I am not in favour of that, because it might turn out to be an excuse for reducing our defence budget. I am not opposed to overseas aid, which has a role to play. We are talking about priorities or quantum. In trying to establish our priorities, I am pointing out that soft power— overseas aid is a massive implement of soft power—has limited value in terms of the threats we face around the world.

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[Bob Stewart]

I understand and accept that, and in a way that is good. Some good things are coming out of it.

As my right hon. Friend has just demonstrated, many countries are clearly deeply worried about Russian intentions close to their borders. No wonder NATO membership is so attractive now. It is a great deal. For those countries, the NATO guarantee is cheap security and insurance. Far too many of the new members of NATO have simply got to pay more. Only Estonia, France, Greece, Poland, Turkey and the UK will come near the NATO minimum target of 2% in 2015. Some NATO members will spend far less than that. According to the IMF, some—such as Albania, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Iceland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Slovakia and Spain—spent 1% or less of their GNP on defence last year.

I am sorry for spending so much of my speech on statistics, but I hope that I have made the point about the huge importance of NATO’s minimum target of 2%. Achieving it and keeping above it shows commitment, and is also a symbolic gesture of genuine support for the alliance.

[Kevin Foster]

Does my hon. and gallant Friend agree that the 2% is like an insurance policy? Countries get the protection of article 5 mutual defence, but it is the premium that they need to pay in exchange.

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[Andrew Rosindell]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The truth is that we live in a very different world from the one of the 1980s. We have to adapt to modern-day threats, including people who use technology against the interests of our country and our NATO allies. Therefore, we cannot take it for granted that defence spending should be on a downward slide. We must think about the importance of dealing with today’s threats. My right hon. Friend makes that point eloquently.

The enemies we face today no longer occupy clear territory or fight conventionally, as my right hon. Friend stated. Today’s threats come from groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIL. They have no clear borders and fight unconventional wars. In many respects, they pose a greater challenge to our armed forces and national defence.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)—my good friend—has made clear, defence spending as a proportion of GDP has declined. NATO figures suggest that, for 2015-16, the Government will spend 2.1% of GDP on defence. However, that figure includes previously excluded expenditure such as war pensions and other items, as many hon. Members have said. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot referred to the Royal United Service Institute, which says that, without those added expenditures, defence spending will be 1.97% of GDP. I am sorry to say to the Minister that, under the old measurement, the Government will this year fail to meet their 2% spending commitment. Perhaps he will clarify that. It is imperative that my hon. Friend’s Bill becomes the law of this country so that the Government, of whichever political party, will be duty bound to honour the commitment and make the necessary investment to the defence of our United Kingdom.

Continuous decades of cuts to our defence budget have caused despair among many leading members of our defence staff. In 2012, General Sir Michael Jackson warned that, if Argentina were to launch another invasion of the British overseas territory of the Falklands Islands, retaking them would be “impossible”—I know that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, are very passionate about the defence of the Falkland Islands. In stating that, General Sir Michael Jackson pointed out that he feared that we could not adequately defend British citizens in our overseas territories. At that time, defence spending was, at 2.2%, higher than it is today.

The need for a much stronger Royal Navy presence in the British sovereign waters around Gibraltar is now paramount. More resources are needed to counter the illegal and aggressive incursions by Spanish vessels, which are shamefully supported and excused by the Spanish Government. Those extra resources should be combined with a more robust approach to the defence of Gibraltar from the Government, which is long overdue.

It seems perverse to me that, at a time when we ask our armed forces to undertake ever more demanding work in far-flung regions of the world, we have been so short-sighted in reducing the resources they desperately need. As hon. Members know, in the last Parliament, a Bill was passed that requires the Government to spend 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid. Failing to pass a similar Bill—it applies the same principle—that legally commits the Government to spend 2% of GDP on defence would send a very negative message to the servicemen and women who put their lives on the line for our wellbeing every single day of their lives.

[Kevin Foster]

My hon. Friend is making a great speech outlining the existing threats to this country. We regularly talk about a nuclear deterrent, but does he agree that NATO must also provide a conventional deterrent and keep a minimum capability that can be expanded in a crisis if necessary to deter an attack by another industrialised nation on one of its members?

[Andrew Rosindell]

I am delighted to see my new hon. Friend in the House. He makes an excellent point with which I agree entirely. We must ensure that the nuclear deterrent is maintained, but we must also not neglect our conventional forces, which are perhaps more relevant now than they were a few years ago. His point is absolutely spot on.

If the Bill fails, the message would be that Britain is not willing to commit to those who serve us so selflessly, and that defence is no longer the priority it might once have been. I hope the Minister assures the House that that is simply not the case.

The Bill gives us, the elected representatives of the people of the United Kingdom, a chance to enshrine in law a commitment that would prevent this or any future British Government from performing the kind of U-turns and policy failures that could jeopardise their ability to carry out their first and foremost duty, namely the defence of the realm, which includes Her Majesty’s overseas territories and Crown dependencies. The Bill, which was so ably presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot, will guarantee the ability of Her Majesty’s Government to carry out their fundamental duty to invest adequately in Britain’s defences, maintain the freedom of the people of these islands and protect our cherished British way of life.

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[Antoinette Sandbach]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. and gallant Friend. My constituents are hugely proud of that.

The role that the British Army and our forces play is key in protecting not only the realm but overseas. My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) refers to the diverse threats we now face and it is clear that those threats are varied and appear suddenly out of the blue in places where they were not anticipated. We have seen, for example, the rise of Daesh and the threat that that poses to our country.

I know that the Minister appreciates that investment in defence leads to skills that come back into our civilian community, particularly in vital areas such as engineering, communication and cyber-skills. That investment represents an investment elsewhere in our economy and gives a return to us as a country. I urge the Government to support the Bill, as that investment in our country’s future is key. It is not just about the defence of the realm but about the economic benefits that can be gained from the huge skills that that investment provides to the British economy.

My constituents raise the question of the 2% commitment with me regularly, and they do so because they have seen the 0.7% commitment. I agree that we need to support countries that need our assistance, but they do not understand why that commitment can be made to international aid but not to defence.

[Kevin Foster]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and a powerful point about the economic benefit of the skills people acquire in the military. Does she agree that it is even more pressing when we consider the potential expansion of civil nuclear power, given that virtually every senior nuclear engineer in this country has been trained by our nuclear Navy?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I wholly agree. In the context of the north-west and Wales, the new Wylfa B power station is planned and those nuclear skills will be key in securing the energy future of our country. My constituents specifically asked me to be present for this debate and to make the point that they urge the Government to stick to the minimum commitment of 2% to be spent on defence and to consider increasing the budget. For them and their families, the security and defence of the realm is hugely important. They understand and appreciate that that investment in defence leads to broader economic benefits. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) for introducing this Bill so I can support it today.

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[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am grateful to the Minister. We have learned lessons from previous procurement programmes, and we are building in time overruns, which is a sensible thing to do so that the MOD is not embarrassed. We all pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is doing sterling work in this area. Nobody doubts his commitment to what he is trying to achieve. I was not making any criticism of the work that he is doing or that the Government are doing. I am merely saying that in the long term, just as we have stresses and strains in the international development budget, we might get similar stresses and strains in the MOD budget, which is infinitely more complex. Perhaps we could bear that in mind.

Let me paint the picture, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has done, of what is happening in Europe as a whole. We all know that for too long we have ridden on the coat tails of America. Since the 1990s and the end of the cold war, I am afraid that we have witnessed a radical downturn in the US military commitment on the European continent. That means that in order to make up the capability shortfall, European states must step up, but they are not stepping up; and that they must invest more, but they are not. By the way, it is extraordinary what is happening to the German defence budget. It is unbelievable how small its land army now is, for a great continental power. What is happening in the German military programme is very worrying. How extraordinary that a Conservative Member of Parliament should be saying that, given our history, but it is worrying.

NATO member states’ failure to meet the 2% minimum target exposes Europe to risks both known and unknown. Jan Techau of the Carnegie International Endowment for Peace has warned:

“Since the end of the Cold War in 1990, overall defense spending among NATO members has been cut so significantly and so persistently that serious concerns have arisen about the alliance’s military readiness and its ability to keep credible its security guarantee to its member states.”

Yet, as we have heard, only a handful of countries are meeting the target. I asked my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East, who is an expert in these matters, who dreamed up the 2% target, and he thought it might have been George Robertson. Perhaps we can investigate that and the Minister will deal with it later. The target has proved very useful. It might be unscientific, but at least it is doing a good service in holding our feet to the fire, and those of other countries, and showing up exactly what is happening.

NATO’s experts estimate that four European countries have met the target: Greece, with 2.4%; Poland, with 2.2%; the United Kingdom—some have argued about this—with 2.1%; and Estonia, with a level 2%. We might be surprised that Greece, in the midst of economic turmoil, has the highest defence spending as a percentage of GDP, but the recent refugee crisis should help to remind us that it has a massive maritime patrol area as its responsibility. We have talked a lot about defence, but we have not mentioned migrants. There is a real role for NATO, and for our armed forces, including the Royal Navy, in dealing with migrants.

[Kevin Foster]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He touches on the role of NATO and defence forces in relation to the migrant crisis. Does he agree that one of the important things about having the minimum floor in defence spending is having that capability, because of the flexibility it provides? As the First Sea Lord has said, the Royal Navy can go anywhere, without permission, on the global commons and provide options and capability for this nation.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am grateful for that intervention. At RAF Scampton I was told that the RAF is stretched to the limit, and so is the Royal Navy. There is a lot of focus on reductions in the Army, and my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham would like us to focus on that, but the real stresses are in the RAF and the Royal Navy.

Greece has been reticent in cutting personnel and finds it worthwhile, strangely enough, to maintain twice as many tanks as we do. Poland, meanwhile, is a front-line state that feels very keenly Russia’s increased assertiveness. It is replacing a great deal of outdated Warsaw pact equipment, and Estonia is doing likewise.

The United States is top of the NATO list, of course, with 3.6% of GDP committed to defence in 2015. Recent history attests that the US is in a period of hyperactive commitments all over the globe. It is no surprise, then, that despite the withdrawal from Europe, US defence spending as a percentage of GDP and in real terms is still high, especially in relation to other NATO states. There is no denying that the US is still the keystone of NATO, but there is a danger—we should not forget the lessons of history—of overestimating its willingness and capability to respond in common to a defence threat in Europe if it is engaged in large-scale operations elsewhere in the world.

President Obama’s pivot—that is their word, so I use it advisedly—towards Asia is indicative of an American trend away from valuing the European continent as a place where defence attention is required and where attention should be focused. Events may force that evaluation to change rapidly, but NATO member states in Europe will need to have the capability to handle conflict while awaiting the arrival of greater American participation.

We need to remember that fundamental lesson of history—the lesson of Suez. Although the US is mandated to come to the aid of NATO member states that are victims of external aggression, we may find ourselves in much more complex situations in which NATO member states are active in a conflict without the support of the United States. Indeed, we were active in a recent conflict in Libya without the active support of the United States on the ground.

The simple truth, of course, is that we do not know what the future holds. Imagine what the reaction would have been if we had told people in 1985 that in 20 years’ time Russia would have a thriving if unequal capitalist economy and that Russians would own most of the most expensive London properties, premier league football teams and even daily newspapers. They would have said that my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot and I were fantasists if we had argued that Russia would be in the position she is in today. More recently, the events of the Arab spring have challenged many of our assumptions about the middle east and north Africa while confirming others. It is incumbent on us, therefore, not only to uphold the 2% commitment but to set it as a minimum, not a target.

I recommend that Members read the recent Civitas report on defence acquisition, behind which my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) was a driving force. It states:

“The painful truth is that, on two per cent of GDP, we cannot maintain the kind of robust defence structure we did in the past, where we were able to organise and equip our armed forces; to match all potential competitors and to undertake all likely contingencies simultaneously; to support all our foreign policy objectives through influence and deterrence; and to cope with all the non-combat tasks they might be called upon to perform.”

That sums up the situation very well, and the report focuses on our actually meeting the 2% commitment.

The Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot is admirable in its simplicity. In fewer than 700 words, it lays out clear commitments, as well as simple oversight structures, to ensure that this country maintains, at the very least, its NATO target of 2% of GDP spending on defence.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in July that the United Kingdom will meet that target. I do not need to stress the point—my hon. Friend has dealt with it more than adequately—but it is not enough for the Chancellor to make that commitment, because we do not know what events will rock us in the future. Indeed, the Government are currently being rocked by a row about cutting tax credits. I understand what the Chancellor is doing in terms of addressing the budget and I do not want to argue about tax credits, but the political turmoil we are going through in order to cut them is going to save £5 billion, which is the exact sum by which we have increased the international aid budget. That is an interesting analogy. I suspect that the reason the Government were so reticent to make the 2% commitment to defence during and after the general election—we have had to wade through blood, in a sense, to get it—is that the defence budget is so much bigger and more complex than the international aid budget that the Chancellor is, quite rightly, desperately worried about how he is going to deal with the deficit. I do not blame him for that: it is his job and these are very complex and difficult issues.

The Bill simply provides clarification and a useful political tool for us to not only meet but exceed the target. It also requires the Government to explain their actions if they fail to meet that condition. I pray that the Bill is passed, because not only has it given us the opportunity to debate the issue, but it will allow us to scrutinise the Government on their primary commitment and most absolute function, which is the defence of the realm.

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[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to support the Bill. I welcome the fact that it has been brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth).

It is safe to say that I am probably only here because of the Royal Navy. In 1944, Philip and Dorothy Foster—both RN—met in a galley. He was in charge of the stewards and she was in charge of the Wrens in the kitchen. They both had a view on how the galley could perform better and they each blamed the other. Hon. Members can imagine what followed.

To know why the Bill is so important, we need think only about what we see when we are out and about as members of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, meeting many people in the Navy and looking at what they are delivering. I will stick with the Navy, because I am with that service, although the Royal Air Force and the Army also provide such a valuable role. As my grandfather would have said, however, I know which is the senior of the three services.

This is about defending and protecting our nation from all threats, not just military ones. The crew of HMS Iron Duke have been out in the Baltic to deal with a more traditional threat, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) has said, others went out to fight Ebola, a virus that would have threatened lives in this country had it been allowed to spread. That is key: it was as much about saving lives here as about saving lives out in Africa. Had it become a pandemic, it would have reached this country. We could not keep out the black death in the middle ages, and we would not have kept out Ebola in the interconnected 21st-century world.

The Bill is about providing a basic level of support—a floor—in spending as an insurance policy. Why should that be put into law? In the past, I would have emphasised the view that it is for the Chancellor in each Parliament to set out the spending commitments and plans, and to put forward Budgets for approval by the House. The Act to enshrine the international aid commitment has changed my view. For the first time, the commitment of a specific part of GNI—in this case, it is of GDP—was enshrined in law. Now that such a precedent has been set, it is right to put into law one of our other key international pledges, the 2% of GDP on defence.

How we spend the 2% is key—nobody is arguing that it should be wasted or put into inefficient projects—but at 2% of GDP, given some of the historical spending figures that have been cited, we are hardly being spendthrift. It is vital to keep a minimum capability to be able to act. That should be not just through our nuclear deterrent, which we regularly talk about, but, as I said in an intervention, through the conventional deterrent that NATO needs to provide.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) spoke about the German defence budget. Fundamentally, having a bulwark of conventional forces that can be rapidly expanded at a time of crisis is as much a part of NATO’s article 5 deterrence as is the threat of nuclear retaliation if an aggressor state uses weapons of mass destruction against any NATO member. For me, the Bill is about that.

The Bill is also about encouraging our allies by enshrining the commitment in legislation. A country cannot have the Rolls-Royce insurance policy of article 5 mutual self-defence if its budget is that of an old banger. Some countries are building such a capability, but others need to do the same, not least the larger European countries such as Germany and Italy. I would join my hon. Friend in saying that for Germany—a modern, democratic Germany, committed to human rights—to have a capable and effective military is as key a part of keeping security and stability and deterring potential threats to our allies as it is for the United States and the United Kingdom. We obviously had a few differences in history, but we need to look at the future threats, not reminisce about the past.

Putting the target into legislation will secure us against future Governments who do not have the same priorities as we have today. I believe that the current Chancellor and Prime Minister are committed to meeting the target of spending a minimum of 2% of GDP on defence, in accordance with the NATO standard, but imagine if we had a Prime Minister who took the following view:

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every politician around the world, instead of taking pride in the size of their armed forces…abolished their army and took pride in the fact they don’t have an army… That is the way we should be going forward.”

I do not think that the British people are very likely to elect to that role someone who believes that, but it is important to have a bulwark to ensure our ongoing capability. The NATO alliance is based on knowing that the allies that would come to one’s rescue will have their capabilities for 10, 15 or 20 years, not just for the lifetime of one Government.

As I said in a couple of interventions, I do not accept the argument that there is a conflict between our 0.7% commitment on international aid and our 2% commitment on defence. Our expenditure is about providing a military capability that gives this House and our Government—in particular the Prime Minister, who exercises the royal prerogative—choices when faced with situations. The choice could be to exercise lethal force to take out a threat to this country’s security in a lawless area where the application of international law or a request for extradition would be an almost meaningless gesture, as occurred recently.

The choice could also be to provide unarmed assistance, as in Operation Gritrock, which has been mentioned, thereby using the ability of the military to go anywhere, to deploy and to deliver a capability for a humanitarian end. That could be setting up a field hospital, providing medicine or providing people who are skilled and trained in dealing with biological and chemical warfare agents, whose skills are eminently applicable when a major illness or disease breaks out. As has been said, the military can deliver soft power as well as the hard power that we traditionally assume it will use.

The example that I always give is HMS Ocean, which I have visited. It can be viewed as an amphibious helicopter landing platform. I recently saw it used as part of the Wader exercise, which involved deploying marines and planning a beach raid. It can also be seen as a hospital, a place that can feed thousands of people in an hour and a place that can provide infrastructure for a country that has just had its infrastructure shattered by an earthquake or other natural disaster. It is still the same capability and the same money is being spent.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

HMS Ocean serves a further purpose. It provides a magnificent backdrop for signing a treaty with Brazil, which I was privileged to do as a Minister.

[Kevin Foster]

Indeed, our Navy has always been part of our diplomatic missions across the seas. It has provided a platform not just for war fighting but for trade and diplomacy. It has literally flown our flag for all purposes, not just the traditional purpose of deterrence. Plenty of treaties have been signed on board our ships in the past, and hopefully plenty more will be signed in the coming years.

It is appropriate to commit to the target in the Bill because we do not know exactly what the future threats will be. Two hundred and ten years ago, our predecessors in this House were still awaiting the news of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, because HMS Pickle was still on its way to Falmouth. The threats we face today would have been unimaginable at that time. For me, this is about making sure that we have a minimum expenditure on capability enshrined in law, so that whatever threat comes along over the next 20 to 30 years we have armed forces that are able to respond to it in their current form or able to expand, as they did in the great crises of 1939 and 1914 to meet a new aggressive threat. At the core of those forces must be professionals who have been in the military for many years and can take their skills with them into an expanded military.

I believe that this is the right step to take. It is certainly one that many of our constituents wish us to take. If we had not put into law one international target, I would accept the argument that we should not put such targets into our national law, but the precedent has been set. It is therefore time to put this target into our law and send a similarly powerful message to other countries about our commitment to the north Atlantic alliance as that which we have sent about our commitment to the UN’s development goals. I might have accepted the arguments about relevance and so forth, but they were all dealt with in the consideration of the other Bill.

As has been said, NATO has now expanded to 26 members, and it is vital—

[Bob Stewart]

Twenty-eight.

[Kevin Foster]

I happily stand corrected by my hon. and gallant Friend.

This House needs to send a clear message to all the other members that we expect them to play their role in the alliance and not just rely, as has traditionally happened, on the United States to fund the majority of NATO’s capability. As we approach a presidential election next year in which it appears domestic issues will again be the greatest priority in US public debate, it would be naive at best to continue to believe that the US will not take the opportunity to ask Europe to pay for its own defence. Hence, it is important that we, as one of the key European powers, set this benchmark into our law and give it a more permanent basis.

In conclusion, it has been a pleasure to listen to so many colleagues in this debate. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. I pay tribute to the improvements in the spending of our money in the area of defence procurement. Hopefully, we will see massive new capabilities coming on stream with projects such as the Type 26. The Bill is not about being spendthrift on defence or about spending money on things that we do not need. It is right to make sure that our procurement is accurate. We do not want another situation like the Type 45 project, where a £6 billion budget for 12 destroyers became a £6 billion budget for six. That is not a situation that anyone in this House wants.

With the new carriers coming on stream, the new Astute class submarine being available for deployment and the new kit across our armed forces, I think we will have capable and effective armed forces into the future, but we need to give them certainty over future funding. That is why it is right that the Government made the pledge that they did and why it is right that this House puts into law the minimum we will spend for the long term, making it much harder for any future Government to change it on a whim. I do not believe that this Government will, but there is always a chance that others will.

It is right that we take a leading role in NATO, it is right that the Government are committed to the target and it is right for us to give the Bill its Second Reading.

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[Mr Dunne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for informing the House of those facts, based on his deep experience of our capabilities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) is already proving to be a doughty champion for Cheshire, my neighbouring county. I am always pleased to see people standing up for Cheshire. She has also given tremendous support to the armed forces since arriving in the House. I applaud her for that and support her efforts. She drew attention to the contribution that defence makes to the prosperity of the nation, which I touched on earlier. She is absolutely right about the skills that defence is able to provide to our people. We are the largest employer of young people coming out of college or school into an engineering trade. We are also the largest provider of apprenticeship programmes in the country and the largest provider of skilled employees back into the civilian workforce, once military careers come to an end. We therefore play an enormous role, which needs to be more widely acknowledged, in helping to upskill our nation.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) explained the significance to defence of RAF Marham in Norfolk, as the home of the Tornado squadron, including 31 Squadron, with which, as we discovered, his father served. RAF Marham will become the home of the squadron for the new F-25B joint strike fighter, Lightning II, when it is stood up. He spoke powerfully of the role of international development aid as a pump primer for trade to help recipient countries to emerge into self-sufficiency.

I would like to dwell for a moment on the mutually supportive role that humanitarian aid spending can play to help to keep this country and its citizens secure. With the present conflicts in the middle and near east, the United Kingdom is able to use the aid budget, through DFID, to provide vital humanitarian assistance. As hon. Friends are aware, refugees from the Syrian civil war have received £1.1 billion from the United Kingdom. We are the largest donor outside of the US to those suffering from this appalling civil war, and in Yemen we are the fourth largest donor, which is not quite so well known, following the US and regional donors. We have pledged £75 million to humanitarian relief stemming from the civil war in that country. There is therefore a vital role for us to play as a nation, and the pledge to contribute 0.7% of GNI—which I will come to later and which is used to help refugees in those places—helps us as a nation to remain more secure, so in my mind there is a clear linkage between these two pledges.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough spoke movingly of the role of defence in our midst, especially in his county of Lincolnshire. RAF Scampton is of course the home of the Red Arrows, who play such a vital role in promoting the air force and will, I believe, play a part in welcoming the Prime Minister of India on his visit, which will be exciting to watch. Lincolnshire is also, as he told us, home to RAF Coningsby, one of the three operating bases for combat jets across the UK, and RAF Waddington, the operating base for our ISTAR—information, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—assets, or at least it will be again, once its runway has been resurfaced, which is under way at the moment.

As a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend spoke knowledgeably about the risks to good government of ring-fencing, as we have discussed. He also raised the problem of target setting, with the attendant risk of skewing procurement, not least given the challenges, which I am grateful to him for acknowledging, that exist in managing such a significant procurement programme as we have in defence.

It was good to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) to a defence debate. She acknowledged that she is not an habitual attender, unlike many of the other colleagues who have participated in the debate, and it was refreshing to hear a different approach. She emphasised how the military can and does support humanitarian efforts, often on a cross-government basis, to help other nations in distress. She referenced Sierra Leone and Nepal—I will have something else to say about Sierra Leone in a few minutes. I would like to draw her attention to the role that the military was able to play in bringing relief to the people of the Bahamas earlier this month, when a just-under hurricane strength storm ripped across the islands, causing mudslides and wreaking havoc. As it happens, I was the Minister on duty on the day and was able to authorise the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Lyme Bay to go to the assistance of the people of the Bahamas. It was there for a few days and provided invaluable help to the people of those islands.

My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) started by enlightening the House about his formative—may I say existential?—relationship with the Royal Navy. He welcomed our plans to develop new capabilities for our armed forces, but cautioned us on the importance of avoiding waste and poor decision making in improving our procurement processes. As he has an interest in this, I hope he will take the opportunity to look at what we are doing in our equipment plan, which was published yesterday, and will appreciate what the National Audit Office said—which was little short of praise—for the progress made thus far. We are acutely aware that we cannot rest on our laurels. It is important to continue to bear down on inefficiency.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the Minister for his comments. He will be pleased to know that the Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, regularly considers these issues. We discussed military flying training recently and have also looked at the forward review and we were pleased to see many of the changes being made.

[Mr Dunne]

I am grateful for that further endorsement of the progress being made.

Having congratulated the hon. Member for York Central on taking up her now post, I should also take this opportunity to welcome her remarks. For most of what she said, I found we had very little issue between us. It was a particular pleasure to hear her endorsement of the 2% NATO pledge. That is extremely welcome and clears up one of the apparent inconsistencies that have been flying around the media, in connection with a potential lack of support from the Leader of the Opposition for NATO. It is very welcome to hear that that is not the case, and I am sure the whole House will agree that that clarification was useful.

Having referenced the contributions made by hon. Members in general, let me turn to some of the specifics, in particular some of the calculations. Much of the talk in this debate has been about one half of the calculation of 2%. There has been hardly any reference to the denominator, in this case gross domestic product. Members are aware that in this country, thankfully, GDP has been growing faster than in any other G7 nation over the last two years. That is to be welcomed. Of course, each year that GDP grows, more challenges are placed on defence and Government spending as a whole if our spending is not able to grow at the same pace. From a purely arithmetic point of view, it becomes harder for defence to achieve a minimum threshold expressed as a percentage unless we are able to grow in tandem. Under present plans, we are likely to grow, but not at quite such a pace.

There are also changes from time to time in the way GDP is calculated. One important such change took place only last year. That was the result of the European system of national and regular accounts—ESA 2010, as it is known—which gives guidance on standardising public finance accounts across the European Union. Major differences to the way GDP is calculated include ESA 2010 counting weapons expenditure and R and D spend as capital spend, as well as including non-profit organisations that serve households and—this is a particularly big one that affected the UK—the proceeds from what used to be called the black economy, but is now, I gather, called the underground economy, such as illegal activities, including prostitution and drug dealing. When we add the apparent proceeds from prostitution and drug dealing to GDP, it makes achieving the target that much more difficult, with of course no cash consequence whatever.

We adopted the new accounting methods to bring the country into line with other EU members. This initially added £43 billion to the UK GDP, following the re-evaluation—the equivalent of a 3.6% average increase in GDP, which was subsequently revised upwards, to 4.1%. Those changes will make the difficult task of meeting the NATO guideline of spending 2% of GDP on defence even more of a challenge, and the impact of the change in the GDP denominator has been estimated as a 0.09%—so almost 1%—reduction in the defence calculation for zero cash effect.

Article 3 of NATO’s founding charter states:

“In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack”.

Like any insurance policy, defence only pays out when you pay in. Some hon. Members mentioned the contribution that the United States makes financially to the NATO alliance and the increasing dependence that we have on it. We cannot expect US taxpayers to go on picking up the security cheque so that nations on the European side of the Atlantic can prioritise social welfare spending when the threats are on our doorstep, especially at a time when the US is under increasing pressure to meet its own debt reduction targets and is pivoting to face new threats in the Asia Pacific region. Moreover, the combined wealth of the non-US allies, measured in GDP, exceeds that of the United States.

Non-US allies together spend less than half of what the United States spends on defence, and the gap between defence spending in the United States compared to Canada and European members combined has increased since 9/11. Today, the volume of US defence expenditure effectively represents 73% of the defence spending of the alliance as a whole. So there is an over-reliance by the alliance as a whole on the United States for the provision of essential capabilities, especially when it comes to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refuelling; ballistic missile defence; and airborne electronic warfare.

As it always has done in the past, the UK is once more taking the lead in turning NATO around. That is why we have committed to the readiness action plan. That is why we are playing a significant role in NATO assurance measures, protecting Baltic skies from Russian aggression and joining the transatlantic capability enhancement and training initiative, alongside the US and—yes—Germany, to offer reassurance to our allies and help to build regional capacity and capability. That is also why we are also a framework nation for the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (Land) Brigade and are committed to providing it with thousands of troops a year. In fact, the Spearhead Force, as it will be known —a rather more useful short name than the usual military acronym—is currently being put through its paces in Exercise Trident Juncture before it goes operational next year. The UK is committing some 2,800 personnel including an Army Brigade Headquarters and Battlegroup, three Royal Navy warships and aircraft, including Typhoon fighter jets and helicopters, to those manoeuvres.

Above all, our leadership in NATO is illustrated by the fact that we are prepared to put our money where our mouth is. We have a budget of £35 billion, the second largest defence expenditure in the alliance. We are one of those five nations projected to spend 2% of GDP on defence in 2015, and the Chancellor has made the commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence for every year of this decade. Make no mistake: our allies appreciate our efforts. It has been suggested in this debate that unless the Bill proceeds we will suffer opprobrium from some of our main NATO allies. I am afraid that hon. Members are misguided, because our principal allies in NATO have expressed on several occasions their pleasure that we are taking that lead. Let us not forget that President Obama was first on the phone to the Prime Minister after the Chancellor had made that major spending announcement.