Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

No, frankly, I do not think we are. That comes back to the fact that this is not a target that we have to hit precisely. This is a minimum—in my opinion and from my point of view, an inadequate minimum. It is much easier to land the helicopter on a deck when the deck is quite an enormous one: all we have to worry about is putting the helicopter down on some part of that enormous deck. We do not have to worry about which part of the deck we manage to alight upon. Therefore, should we end up spending, for example, 2.5%, 2.8% or 3%, we shall still have fulfilled the purposes of the Bill. At this point, it may be convenient to reflect on what the size of the deck of that carrier has been in decades gone by. Then, perhaps, we shall see that we should not be struggling to get on to the deck; on the contrary, we should be asking ourselves why we are engaged in achieving such a very modest aim.

Between 1955 and 1960, the percentage of GDP that we spent on defence varied from 7.2% to 5.9%. Between 1960 and 1969, it varied from 6.1% to 5%. From 1969 all the way until 1980, it varied from a high of 4.8% in 1975-76 to 4.2%. As recently as 1980-85, it varied from 5.1% to 4.7%, and in 1985-90, it varied from 4.6% to 3.9%. Even after the end of the cold war, in the period between 1990 and 1995, it varied from 4.1% to 3.2%. Not until the financial year 1994-95 did the figure dip below 3%. I would argue—and this was foreshadowed by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot in his excellent speech—that a country with our level of commitments and responsibilities certainly ought to be thinking about spending 3% of GDP on defence.

The situation in terms of the threats that we face has become increasingly fraught. I, for one, was very surprised that only a year after the 2010 strategic defence and security review made what I think was an 8% cut in the defence budget, we were already keen to engage in an additional conflict in Libya, the wisdom of which has subsequently—and, in my view, rightly—been questioned. But whichever side we take in that particular argument, it follows that if we are in the business of still wishing to intervene, we must certainly be in the business of making the appropriate financial investment.

During one of the public hearings that we have held so far, it was pointed out that it is not enough simply to look at the amount of defence investment that we make, because it is possible to spend a lot of money on the wrong things and still end up with inadequately structured armed forces. If I may dip into history, I suspect that the Maginot line occupied a rather large chunk of the French military expenditure budget in the period leading up to the second world war. It was not a very good investment.

It is, of course, difficult to quantify outcomes when it comes to the appropriateness of the way in which money has been spent, but even if spending a lot of money on defence is not a sufficient condition for the achievement of good defence outcomes, it is certainly a necessary condition. Earlier, I described in detail what happened to the defence budget when it was in decline. Over the same period, our welfare budget ballooned, our education budget ballooned, and our health budget ballooned as percentages of GDP. I am not criticising that in any way, but it is rather extraordinary that that pattern of steep decline in spending on defence as a national priority has been allowed to occur, given the extent to which we have remained engaged in the carrying out of military activity from time to time on the world stage.

Embodying the proposal for 2% in law is a worthwhile endeavour because it will send a signal that any Government who wish to renege on the commitment will have to unpick the legislation in order to do so. It is unsatisfactory that we as a country cannot feel comfortable that defence occupies a sufficient role in our league table of commitments to spend from the public purse. As I said in an intervention, however, the endeavour of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot to ensure that the commitment is enshrined in law carries with it the risk that what should be a minimum will become a target. It is true to say that, from time to time, some of us on these Benches who take a particular interest in defence have been less than totally helpful towards those on the Front Bench when we have felt that their commitment to defence had fallen short of what it should be.

Around the time of the Wales summit, the Prime Minister made a statement about the importance of urging our NATO allies to meet the 2% minimum, and I decided to seize the opportunity to show my full support for those on my Front Bench by asking him an easy question. I got to my feet and the Prime Minister gave way graciously, as he always does. I asked him whether he would like to give the House an assurance that, as long as he remained Prime Minister, there would be no question of this country dipping below the 2% minimum. Rather to my discombobulation—[Hon. Members: “Sorry?”] I thought that would attract a bit of attention. Rather to my discombobulation, I was told that, although the commitment was being met that week and that year and was going to be met the following year, after that we would just have to wait and see. That prompted concern among a number of us that the commitment to the NATO minimum was in jeopardy.

I well remember how, during the long years of opposition, we used to excoriate the Labour Government for playing fast and loose with the figures relating to the GDP spend on defence. In particular, I remember one statement that Tony Blair made, I think in 2007 when he was coming to the end of his 10-year period in office as Prime Minister. He made a speech on HMS Albion, in which he said that, taking defence expenditure as a whole over the preceding 10 years of the Labour Government, it had remained roughly constant at about 2.5% of GDP if the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan were included. As a Member of the shadow Defence team, I was quick to point out that the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan were supposed to be met from the Treasury reserve funds, and that if they were stripped out of the picture, Labour was actually spending more like 2.1%, which was inadequate. I continued to make that point in speeches in the House over quite a long period—some would say an excessively long period.

What worries me about the debate on defence expenditure generally is that we are being subjected to the management of expectations. There should never have been the slightest doubt that this country would continue to meet the NATO minimum. We had always done so, and we never even had to think about doing it because we had always surpassed that level quite comfortably. It is a measure of the situation in which we find ourselves today that, as I said in earlier interventions, we are apparently supposed to be ringing the church bells in triumph that we are not going to dip below the NATO minimum.

Because of this undercutting of belief in what politicians do, compared with the commitments that they give, I think it is important that this Bill should go through. I therefore propose to set a good example to other right hon. and hon. Friends by keeping my remarks brief, because I would not like us to find that we were running out of time for the Bill to make the necessary progress that it needs to today. Not that I would ever think for one moment that the Government Whips Office would encourage people to expatiate excessively on this important subject, but just in case they might be tempted to do so, I wish to make that task as difficult as possible and will therefore conclude my contribution to the debate.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I call Bob Stewart.

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[Mr Bellingham]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for that clarification. The idea that there is any quick solution to sorting out the status of such people when they arrive there, granting them asylum or perhaps relocating them is wishful thinking. It takes a very long time indeed under our current processes.

Let us look back roughly one year to Michael Moore’s Bill that set a target of 0.7% for international development. I said at the time that I was appalled by the Bill because we were already spending the 0.7% and I could see no reason for encapsulating it in our law. I could see no logic in doing that, based to some extent on my own experiences of overseas aid. I had the chance to see the good, the very good, the bad, the ugly and the downright bad in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. There is no question but that in some parts of the developing world our aid programmes are making a profound difference on the ground. They are helping with sustainability and development, they are helping small businesses expand and they are making a big impact on the growth of those countries. British humanitarian aid is saving lives in different parts of the world.

Staff from DFID, the related agencies and the NGOs with which they are working in partnership are doing a superb job in many countries. I had the chance to see that all over Africa—in places such as Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I saw a clean water and road building programme; in Juba, the capital of the newest country in Africa; and in the refugee camps in northern Kenya. That is the good, but there are also examples where aid is not being well spent. I lost count of the number of heads of DFID I saw on my travels around Africa who told me that they would struggle to get good-quality aid out of the door. We were looking for programmes and partners in many of those countries, and I was warned on a number of occasions that there were aid programmes that would not deliver and on which mistakes would be made and things would go badly wrong. I can think of at least four examples in Africa where there had been outright scandals involving British aid.

To be fair to DFID, it is taking action, but there is growing evidence that we must try to move from aid relationships with those countries to trade. Many of those countries will move to middle-income status during our political lives, and as they do so it is extremely important that we reduce the aid and move to a trade relationship. My argument at the time was that the 0.7% was not necessary, it was an ill-thought-out move, and the only reason we did it was because we made a pledge in the election campaign. That is an honourable reason for doing something, but it is the wrong reason for doing it because in many cases the 0.7% will be redundant. Furthermore, as our economy expands, that aid budget will go not just from £8 billion to £13 billion, as it has done over the past five years, but it could well be up to £20 billion-plus by the end of this Parliament if our economy grows.

You are looking at me, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I shall conclude by saying that we have a moral obligation to help the poorest in the world. I feel that very strongly. We have a moral obligation to help those who are less in need. We have a moral obligation also to educate our children and young people in this country—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I was hoping the hon. Gentleman was going to come back to defence. I thought there was an analogy coming, but my worry is that he is going to continue doing the same thing.

[Mr Bellingham]

Indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker.

We have those moral obligations to house our people, to educate them and to make sure they have good health, but if we did not provide that as a Government, in many cases the private sector would step in. However, the private sector will never step in to defend this country. We have a duty to defend our country, and that is why, of all the Departments that should be ring-fenced, Defence is the one. There is no logic whatever in ring-fencing and encapsulating in law the 0.7% unless we do the same for defence. That is why I support the Bill wholeheartedly. If we do not get it through, that will send a very bad signal not just to all those constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), but to our partners in NATO, our friends in America and many countries around the world that are looking to Britain to set an example in this crucial area.

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[Fiona Bruce]

I will not comment on my hon. Friend’s last remark, but the town very much supports the regiment. Indeed, every year soldiers from Holland visit Congleton to celebrate with our town the wonderful work many of them did when they were stationed there during the last war.

My second different perspective comes from being a member of the International Development Committee. I also sat on the Bill Committee that debated Michael Moore’s International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015. I very much wanted the 0.7% commitment to international aid to be enshrined in legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot also sat on that Committee, but he was on the other side of the argument. I am pleased to say, however, that we are on the same side today. I absolutely agree that if we can commit to a particular target for the overseas aid budget, why not do the same for defence? I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and others that 2% must be the minimum.

The International Development Committee visited New York last month for the announcement of the sustainable development goals, to which 193 countries have signed up. One of the new goals is to ensure that we keep the peace and provide good governance, the rule of law and sustainable institutions. Unlike the millennium development goals, which were far shorter and simpler, the SDGs require every country not only to endeavour to support the developing world in meeting them, but to commit to do so ourselves. As a country, we have now committed to ensuring that we will do what we can to promote global peace through the SDGs. We did so very publicly, with the Prime Minister and several other Ministers going over there to make that commitment. However, we need the capacity and resources to ensure that we can do so and that we can, when crises occur, ensure that stability, security and peace are promoted.

That is very much my perspective when I say that our forces must be properly resourced to keep the peace. When crises occur and other institutions lack the necessary resources and expertise to tackle potentially devastating problems, it is often British armed forces who step in. I am not seeking to take away from all the other essential roles our forces play with their defence capabilities, on which other hon. Members have much greater expertise, but want to talk instead about the remarkable role that British forces play in promoting peace and containing crises that would otherwise lead to severe instability.

The Ebola crisis last year, particularly in Sierra Leone, was absolutely devastating, but it would have been far worse without the 800 UK military personnel who were sent to west Africa. Military engineers built six treatment centres, each of which had 100 beds. The UK naval ship RFA Argus anchored at Freetown, acting as a base for helicopters to distribute aid and supplies.

When the International Development Committee was in New York last month for the announcement of the SDGs, we met Dr David Nabarro, the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy on Ebola. He told us that last September, when the speed of the epidemic suddenly became clear, the UK provided immediate, strong political leadership. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the International Development Secretary all said together, in effect, “Count on us.” But it was our military that enabled them to translate that political commitment into immediate and very effective action, saving countless lives. I made a careful note of what Dr David Nabarro said:

“My abiding memory of tackling Ebola in Sierra Leone at an early stage were the district Ebola response centres—the DERCs—run by UK Army officers.”

He continued that the UK “wins the prize” on military support:

“The big prizes go to the young Army officers in district offices using management disciplines to bring everyone around the table.”

Without that, he said that

“the epidemic would have been far worse.”

He told us:

“The very presence of RFA Argus in the port of Freetown projected an important symbol of solidarity and stability which helped the capital remain calm.”

We cannot be complacent because, time and again, global health experts tell the International Development Committee that there is likely to be a similar and possibly worse global health crisis within the next 30 years. Unless our forces have the capacity to deal with such situations, the world will be a far less stable place. Unless they have that capacity, we will not be able to reassure our people not only that the defence of this country is provided by the Government as a priority, but that so is the global peace to which the Government are committed as part of the SDGs. However, in speaking about that, I do not want to take anything away from all the other aspects of the work that our forces do so expertly.

In closing, I want to give another example of the remarkable impact of our servicemen. I was a member of the International Development Committee when we went to Nepal just before the terrible earthquake disasters, with which our Gurkha regiment officers and retired Gurkha officers helped out. I want to tell the House about the work that a young serving engineer in the Gurkha regiment oversaw in Nepal. The Gurkha welfare scheme looks after retired Gurkhas in Nepal quite remarkably.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Perhaps I can help the hon. Lady. The Bill is about NATO. I understand that great efforts were made by the Royal Army Medical Corps on Ebola and everything else, but we are debating the funding of NATO. I have been very lenient, but if she could just come round to funding that would be helpful.

[Fiona Bruce]

I will conclude by saying that some remarkable work was carried out in Nepal to provide the water supply for an entire village, at a cost of just £18,000, and it was overseen, with his engineering skills, by that young Army officer. I support the Bill because I believe that it is an essential key to promoting global peace, stability and security, to which our country and 192 other countries have signed up with the SDGs.