Leo Docherty
Main Page: Leo Docherty (Conservative - Aldershot)Department Debates - View all Leo Docherty's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) for securing this important debate.
We have indeed been here before. In 1981, the then Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott, scheduled in his review, “The Way Forward”, the decommissioning of our then amphibious capability, HMS Fearless and HMS Intrepid. Those vessels were only saved because they were critical in Operation Corporate and the liberation of the Falkland Islands the following year.
That lesson from 1982 still stands today. The simple lesson from the Falklands conflict was that when projecting power from a carrier force, we cannot rely on helicopters alone. That was cogently encapsulated in a book, “No Picnic”, which was written by the commander of 3 Commando Brigade, Major General Julian Thompson. In fact, he also highlighted it more recently in a letter to The Daily Telegraph on 28 October. He wrote the letter with Captain Michael Clapp, who was the commander of the amphibious task group in the Falklands, and I will quote from it because it is entirely pertinent. They reject the notion that today, we would be able to project power from a carrier by a helicopter force alone. They considered it back then, but
“rejected it on the grounds that we did not have air superiority, or enough helicopters to land enough troops and their supporting artillery in sufficient strength, in the time required, to fight off counter-attacks by the Argentine army. The only way to achieve a quick enough build-up was by landing craft. The landings were opposed on the ground by very few enemy troops. The main opposition came from the Argentine air force. Had we attempted major helicopter moves in daylight, the Argentine fighters would have had a turkey shoot among our helicopters.”
That lesson still stands today.
I will conclude with a word on the review as a whole. As has been said, the global threat level has increased and, given that, it is illogical to have a capability review that does anything other than increase the resourcing to ensure that we have the required capability to meet the threats. Surely we must maintain the capacity to project force over a beach. Surely we would not want to rely on having a port or an airfield. Surely we must not rely solely on helicopter power, and surely we must maintain some of our finest fighting soldiers in the Royal Marines, who make a disproportionate contribution to our special forces.
Given the global circumstances today, strong defence is not a luxury but an absolute necessity. We await further details from the National Security Adviser, who is running the review, and reassurance from the Minister. As a member of the Defence Committee, I hope that the National Security Adviser will come to that and offer reassurance. However, if the review undermines our capability in any way, it could be dangerous to our armed forces, to our national interest and to our standing on the global stage, and we must guard against that.