Britain in the World

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow such a superb maiden speech by the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn). As a former fisheries Minister, I listened many times to her predecessor giving the same speech in the fisheries debate. Whatever was rightly or wrongly attributed to him—he allegedly said that anybody in a red rosette would win the seat of Grimsby—the hon. Lady has proved those words to be incorrect, because she gave an exceptional performance in this debate. She should feel huge pride in her initial contribution to our proceedings.

Frederick the Great once said:

“Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.”

We need to contemplate that as we decide how Britain plays its role in the world. People in all parts of this House have an internationalist view. In that spirit of working together, much as was outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), we can find a way through the difficult decisions that we have to face. Too often in this House we use phrases such as “projecting power” and “punching above our weight”. I urge hon. Members to treat those phrases with caution. Our constituents are suspicious when we use such phrases. They are weary of Britain playing an eternal role of international policeman. They are suspicious of phrases that might lack humility following some of the interventions in the post-9/11 period, which—whatever the undoubted professionalism and courage of our armed services, and through no fault of theirs—have not been the success that we were led to believe they would be or might have hoped they would be. Too often, too high a price was paid in blood and treasure for those interventions. However, while I have a deep suspicion of those kinds of high-octane interventions, I remain, and this House and this Government should remain, absolutely committed to Britain playing a leading role in the world.

Over the next few weeks the Government will be working on their National Security Council risk assessment, so this is an absolutely crucial moment. Anybody who knows me will know that I have a generally sunny view of life—I am a ready listener to the Prime Minister when he talks about bright sunlit uplands and the great future that awaits this country—but I must confess that as I contemplate the world today an awful bleakness comes over me. It is a more dangerous world than has existed at any time in my lifetime, and I speak as somebody who served in the armed forces during the cold war.

I hope that the National Security Council risk assessment reflects an arc of insecurity around Europe’s south and eastern borders that extends from northern Nigeria through the Maghreb and the Sahel into the horn of Africa, and includes the chaos in Yemen and the tragedy in Iraq and Syria. As we look at Russia’s western border, we see Russia’s actions destabilising countries, some of which we are duty-bound—treaty-bound—to defend if they are attacked. We hear today about threats in the South China sea. We know of emerging threats in different parts of the world. I entirely agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary that climate change is an instigator of instability and that wars that may have been fought over the egos of leaders, or oil or territory will perhaps in future be fought over natural resources such as water, energy and food.

As we look to the future, the important point is to look back to the past. Five years ago, we did not predict that a jihadist group would hold an area the size of France, where they are trying to create a state with levels of barbarity unknown since medieval times. We would not have been able to guess that Russia would actually annex part of a sovereign state. We need to look at how we resource our influence in the world, first understanding the mistakes we made in the past, but then looking to flexible and properly resourced services for the future.

Our armed forces have a societal value to us that we do not value enough. They have the immense value to this country of deterring potential enemies and supporting our allies, but most importantly they exist to counter the threats we face. I hope an intellectual thread will run through the National Security Council’s risk assessment that will feed through to the strategic defence and security review and, from that, to the comprehensive spending review. It is almost impossible to conclude that we can achieve what we need to achieve in the world without spending at least 2% of GDP on defence. We need to make that a factor of honour. As recently as last September, in Wales, the Prime Minister was right to extol the virtues of Britain doing that. Our constituents will want us to keep the Government’s feet to the fire on the most important duty of any Government—the defence and security of the United Kingdom and its interests.