Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Jonathan Reynolds

Monday 3rd November 2014 Ministerial Corrections

[Jonathan Reynolds]

What is the Foreign Secretary’s considered assessment of the relationship between the dependence of some of our European partners on Russian energy supplies, and the effectiveness and robustness of the sanctions that we have pursued against Russia?

[Mr Hammond]

The sanctions are robust. I think that the important relationship is between the dependence on Russian energy supplies and the robustness of the position of some of our partners on the question of maintaining those sanctions. Fortunately, the sanctions that are in place will last until March or May, depending on the type of sanction involved, before any opportunity arises to debate their renewal or otherwise. That means that, at the very least, we shall get through the winter with the sanctions in place.

[Official Report, 28 October 2014, Vol. 587, c. 164.]

Letter of correction from Mr Philip Hammond:

An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) during questions to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

The correct response should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Jonathan Reynolds

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of EU sanctions against Russia in encouraging a change of approach by that country towards eastern Ukraine.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Philip Hammond)]

EU sanctions are having a clear impact on Russia’s economy. Capital flight has increased, and Russian access to western financial markets is severely constrained. Sanctions are estimated to have slowed GDP growth by 1%, and to have contributed to the rouble’s falling by 20% against the dollar since 1 January. The fall in the oil price is piling further pressure on the Russian economy.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

What is the Foreign Secretary’s considered assessment of the relationship between the dependence of some of our European partners on Russian energy supplies, and the effectiveness and robustness of the sanctions that we have pursued against Russia?

[Mr Hammond]

The sanctions are robust. I think that the important relationship is between the dependence on Russian energy supplies and the robustness of the position of some of our partners on the question of maintaining those sanctions. Fortunately, the sanctions that are in place will last until March or May, depending on the type of sanction involved, before any opportunity arises to debate their renewal or otherwise. That means that, at the very least, we shall get through the winter with the sanctions in place.[Official Report, 3 November 2014, Vol. 587, c. 6MC.]

IT Systems (Army Recruitment)

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Jonathan Reynolds

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Outsourcing services is here to stay. At the cost that regular Army soldiers represent to us, we cannot contemplate using them to perform administrative tasks in the recruitment process in future. Those tasks must be outsourced to be sustainable. We are confident that Capita has a solution. At the outset of the contract, we chose not to adopt the Capita solution, but to go with extant departmental policy, which was to use the existing Atlas platform. We have now reversed that decision for the Army recruiting programme.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Based on the figures the Secretary of State has given today, the original decision to try to integrate the Atlas platform seems strange. When that decision was taken, was there no contingency plan? Given the history of trouble with Government IT projects and the importance of the project, what consideration was given to a contingency plan when the decision was taken?

[Mr Hammond]

The contingency plan was put in place and the fact that there was a risk was clearly recognised at the time. The contracts with both Capita and Atlas were written to allow for a reversion to a Capita-hosted solution if the Department decided that that was necessary. That is what we have done.

Afghanistan

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Jonathan Reynolds

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I think my hon. Friend might be confusing two things. There are, rather unhelpfully, two separate 4 billions here. There is £4 billion of development aid that was pledged at Tokyo, and there is $4 billion a year of support for the ANSF, of which the United Kingdom has committed about $100 million—around £70 million. We are confident that these sums will be found and that they will be available to the Afghans on an ongoing basis. We have set out our commitment and we do not intend to change from that position.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like many hon. Members in the Chamber, I represent several families who have lost their loved ones in Afghanistan over the past decade. That felt like a very optimistic statement from the Secretary of State on the progress we have made. I am a little more sceptical about what it has cost us in human life and treasure for the progress we have made. We would all agree that a political solution is necessary to resolve the conflict, but what assurances can the Secretary of State give us that when we reach that political solution with our draw-down forces, we will be able to maintain the safety of all those Afghans who have been our allies over the past decade, and we will not leave them to the mercy of the elements of the Taliban that we wish to draw into the future government of Afghanistan?

[Mr Hammond]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has visited Afghanistan, but many of his colleagues have. It is not a perfect democracy and it never will be. It will not be the case that the Afghan Government will control every inch of their territory after 2014. There will be messy compromises in some parts of the country. Some will not be under the control of the central Government, and some of the behaviours will not be behaviours of the type that we would put up with here or in any European country, but any of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues who have been there will tell him that the lives of ordinary Afghans are immeasurably better today than they were five or six years ago, and that is the standard by which we should measure our involvement.

Army 2020

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Jonathan Reynolds

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to warn me not to take advice from the party opposite, and I shall heed his recommendation. It is indeed the case that the public duties incremental company will also have other military duties. It will also be a rotating company; its strength will be found from the other four battalions in the regiment, so nobody will spend their entire military career in the public duties incremental company.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

In regard to the infantry battalions that have been axed, will the Minister explain what he meant when he said that the demographics of those recruitment areas had been looked at? Is he seriously suggesting that the birth rate in our areas cannot sustain our battalions?

[Mr Hammond]

In some cases, yes. The cohort from which the infantry recruits—typically they are men aged between 18 and 24—is set to decline across the UK as a whole by 12% over the next decade. There are specific issues in some specific regional geographies, and there is also a projected change in the composition of that population cohort, including a relative increase in groups in which the Army is not very successful at recruiting at the moment. There are therefore some very big challenges ahead.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Jonathan Reynolds

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

16. What steps his Department is taking to reduce overcrowding on trains.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Philip Hammond)]

An additional 650 carriages will be delivered to the rail network between 6 May 2010 and March 2014. In addition, about 600 new carriages for the Crossrail project and up to 1,200 new carriages for the Thameslink programme will be delivered between 2015 and 2019, releasing large amounts of rolling stock for redeployment on other lines to increase capacity.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. The growth in the northern economy over the past 10 to 15 years has heralded a significant rise in rail travel. Passenger growth in my region is set to rise further still, and that is particularly the case in constituencies such as mine that lie on or near the edge of major conurbations. In light of that, and following on from his response to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), what assessment has he made of the benefits that the northern hub could bring to the northern economy by relieving overcrowding and putting in place faster and more frequent trains?

[Mr Hammond]

As I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), the northern hub is an interesting and potentially valuable project. Network Rail is evaluating the project, but until we have a proper engineering scheme with a cost attached, it is clearly impossible to carry out a robust cost-benefit analysis. Once we are in a position to produce that, we will be able to examine the scheme properly for prioritisation in the control period 5 investment programme.