Defence Spending

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

I hang on every word of the reports of the Defence Committee. They are authoritative, powerful and impressive. The Chairman of the Defence Committee was once a valued member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and might follow the Foreign Affairs Committee in instigating debates on our own reports, through the Backbench Business Committee.

The focus now may be on the Baltic states. We are right to deploy troops and aircraft there with the Spearhead brigade, and we should make it clear that if there is an intrusion which poses a threat, we shall not hesitate to use that force. But it is ultimately a political decision and one that will be very difficult to make when it comes because the intrusion will involve the use of militias, rather than an overt use of force.

But we are not going to defend Europe on our own. As has been said by many people, the rest of Europe needs to live up to expectations on its level of expenditure. It is ironic that NATO, which was formed in the aftermath of the second world war and of German re-armament, is now calling for Germany to re-arm. I wonder what will be the public reaction if Germany, the largest economy in Europe, said that it was going to double its defence budget. One thing is certain: that would mark the end of the post-war era.

Russia is spending heavily on equipment and so are we. The two new aircraft carriers soon to be launched are the most powerful weapons that this country has ever produced. As someone who served for several years on aircraft carriers in the 1960s, I am well aware of the projection of power that those bits of equipment bring. Where the mistake has been made is in the lack of support equipment to go with it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) said, the issue is not just the fruit and veg being transported behind the carrier, but the anti-submarine underneath it, the air defence aircraft above it and the air defence screen around it. That is the distortion that we will get. Most of the Royal Navy will be required to defend just that one ship, distorting the whole projection of Royal Navy power. If I had been in the Admiralty at the time, I would have preferred to have a dozen Type 45 frigates, which are equally formidable bits of equipment, than the two aircraft carriers.

We have to accept—again, this point was made in an excellent speech from the Chairman of the Defence Committee—that the nature of warfare is changing. As I said, we are not going to see tanks coming across the central European plain. The real battles of the future lie in cyber-warfare—attacks on both economic and military targets. It is the anoraks inside cyber-warehouses in eastern Russia or in Asia who are the current enemy. It is absolutely legitimate for us to increase our levels of expenditure on the security agencies, in particular on GCHQ, to address that. We can argue about whether that should become part of the budget, but the need to do it is beyond doubt.

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

Although I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend about the changing nature of warfare, does he agree that it is essential that this country retains its ability to conduct conventional full-manoeuvre warfare?

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

There is no doubt about that, but the point that I and others make is that the threat is not static and we have to keep adapting.

The second great threat that we face arises from the instability in north Africa. We have seen the flow of boat people coming across the Mediterranean. The drip has grown to a trickle, the trickle is becoming a stream, and 100,000 people are projected to reach Lampedusa. President Sisi of Egypt said the other day that that figure would not be hundreds or thousands; if we do not sort out north Africa, it will be millions. That is the threat that we now face.

I distance myself from critics of the aid budget. It is a perfectly legitimate use of public expenditure to protect this country by spending that budget in innovative ways to address the economic instability in north Africa. Hundreds of millions of young men and women are being born into an economic wasteland. They are turning to crime or emigrating and trying to get into Europe. That is the threat that we face and it must be addressed. So it is not just the defence budget that matters, but the agencies’ budget and the aid budget, all of which have to be looked at in an holistic manner.

As I said in my opening remarks, this is probably the last time that I shall address the House so, if I may, I shall make one or two other comments. It has been a huge privilege to have served in this House. I would like to convey my thanks to all the people who have made it possible, from the policemen on the gate to the ladies in the cafeteria to the Clerks, the Librarians, the staff and the officials whom we work with. It has been a huge privilege to work with them.

There are three great laws in politics. The first is that you should never ask a question unless you know the answer. I believe we are asking serious questions here today and I hope we are going to get the answers. We have some idea what the answers might be, but it is a law to keep very much in mind. The second great law is that old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill any day. Ask anyone who has served in the Whips Office, where I had two happy years, but just look at the mindset in the Kremlin and the old age and treachery there now. We ignore it at our peril. The third great maxim is that in politics perseverance pays. The British people will persevere in their demand of this House to protect the nation if they consider it appropriate and the circumstances call for it, and the House will persist in asking these questions, and it will be right to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dunne]

Yes, it cost just under £100 million to make that decision, which is substantially less than the £1.2 billion cost of the deferral to which I referred earlier. I should congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his contribution today. I had not appreciated that, like me a few months ago, he faced some impediments to getting in and out of the Chamber. I hope that his leg gets better soon.

Even the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, not known for lavishing praise on this Government, said only last week that she had

“seen a step change and improvement in performance, which is incredibly welcome.”

She was referring to the transformation in defence.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

I congratulate Conservative Ministers on making such a tremendous improvement to the capital budget. May I urge them to seek big savings in the bureaucracy of the armed forces? There is no bureaucracy in Whitehall that is worse than that in the Army, Navy and Air Force, and those services really need sorting out.

[Mr Dunne]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his advice. It is the case that vast majority of the headcount reductions across the Ministry of Defence have taken place within the bureaucracy—as my right hon. Friend calls it—of civil service support to the armed forces.

The lesson here is that it is no use having a budget of £34 billion if it is not spent efficiently. Driving efficiency savings out of our budget is an important part of what we have achieved, which is to get more capability for our armed forces out of the money that we spend on defence.

In 2010, the defence budget was the second largest in NATO, and the largest in the EU. In 2015, it remains the second largest in NATO and, by some margin, the largest in the EU. Using NATO’s figures, the UK defence budget is now some $8 billion larger than the next largest EU budget, which is that of France. That gives the UK one of the most effective and deployable armed forces in the world. This very day, the UK has more than 4,000 military personnel deployed overseas on 20 key operations, in 24 countries worldwide.

Our funding also enables the UK to be and remain the most reliable partner to the US in NATO. Since August, we have been the US’s largest partner in the coalition air strikes against ISIL, conducting more than 10% of air strikes. A key capability in the effort, for example, has been the result of investment in the Brimstone missile, the most advanced precision missile system in the world. We are now working to integrate Brimstone on to other platforms such as Typhoon. This is just a single capability within our £163 billion costed, funded, affordable equipment plan, which in turn enables the UK to be one of only four NATO countries consistently to meet the key metric, spending 20% of defence expenditure on major new capabilities.

The clarity of this plan allows us to invest in next-generation capability. I shall give a few brief examples. Our new aircraft carriers will deliver a step change in capability. They are half as long and weigh almost three times as much as the previous Invincible class, yet will deliver their cutting-edge capability with the same size crew. They will have the next-generation F35 aircraft flying from them, and we have ordered four aircraft to form part of the operational squadron in addition to the four currently in test and evaluation in the United States. That platform will be far more capable than the Harrier that they replace. As the Prime Minister confirmed again yesterday, the Conservative party is committed to maintaining a continuous at-sea deterrent and will build a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines, with the final investment decision due in 2016, of which I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) will approve.