Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Walney Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am obviously not privy to the advice given to Ministers in the previous Government by their defence advisers, nor should I be, but if the previous Government were succumbing to recommendations from the defence chiefs, they were doing them no favours by pretending that they could deliver equipment programmes for which there were no funding lines or budget cover, and when there was no prospect of their materialising.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Mr Hammond]

I am going to make some progress.

Does it matter that Labour’s programme was stuffed full of projects that would never and could never be delivered? I would argue that it did matter, because so long as the fantasy persisted, the doctrine and philosophy of our armed forces—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) listens, he might understand the point being made. So long as the fantasy persisted, the doctrine and philosophy of our armed forces were built around the notion of those platforms being delivered, when what the forces really need is a realistic programme that we can deliver and that they can have confidence in, so that they can start rethinking their doctrine and operating philosophy for the future around the platforms and capabilities that we will have.

[John Woodcock]

To aid this debate, could the Secretary of State just remind the House whether his party in opposition argued for a smaller or larger Army than the then Government were prepared to support?

[Mr Hammond]

What I say to the hon. Gentleman is that we face the situation that we face. We came into office with a massive deficit, which we inherited from the previous Government, and as I shall argue, we have taken the tough decisions that, frankly, the previous Government shirked over the last few years, thereby doing the armed forces and the country no favours.

By 2010, Britain’s armed forces had endured a decade of high-tempo operations without a formal defence review and were faced with a period of acute fiscal pressure. The case for reform to ensure that the armed forces were restructured and re-equipped to protect our national security against the threats that we would face, within a budget that the nation could sustain, was unanswerable. Tough decisions were necessary to deal with problems on the scale of the inherited defence deficit, and this Government took them. I am clear, as the Prime Minister and my predecessor have been, that whatever the pain, our first duty is to put our armed forces on a sustainable basis by restructuring them for the future and putting the budgets that sustain them on a stable footing. As the SDSR acknowledged, the process of transitioning to Future Force 2020 will require us to take some calculated and carefully managed risks against certain capabilities, most prominent among which are wide-area maritime surveillance, to which the hon. Member for Bridgend referred, and carrier strike.

I regret in particular the cuts in personnel that are required to deliver that rebalancing and make the armed forces sustainable. However, in case any confusion has been created over the last few days, let me clear up one point. The headcount of military personnel will have been reduced by around 18% by 2020 compared with the 2010 baseline. That is in contrast to a 38% reduction in civilian headcount. Regrettably, some of that reduction will have to be achieved by redundancy. Where that is necessary, every opportunity is being given, and will continue to be given, for military personnel at risk of redundancy to retrain for alternative roles of which there are shortages in the armed forces.

I heard the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire earlier. Following the publication of the Select Committee’s report, I have asked for a specific briefing on the point that he raised. I would be happy to share that with him after the debate—[Interruption.] I will share it with the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) as well, if he wishes. It includes a list of the shortage trades for which suitably qualified individuals who are facing redundancy are invited to apply.

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[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am not quite sure how to follow that quotation, so I shall confine myself to saying how moving those remarks those were.

I have to confess that I had not intended to speak today, but Members will understand why, in the circumstances, I thought I should stress the importance that my party continues to attach to retaining and renewing the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.

I say at the outset that the nuclear deterrent should primarily and ultimately be a matter of national and global security, not of employment. If we could genuinely be confident that the UK unilaterally disarming would make the world safer for future generations of UK citizens, and would make the almost unimaginable horror and destruction of nuclear war less likely, that should of course come ahead even of the thousands of jobs that renewing the deterrent would support in my constituency and the many thousands more that it would support across the country in the supply chain. However, my simple point is that unilaterally disarming would do no such thing.

If we were to take the view that deciding now not to renew would make the UK safer, we would have to be able to make decisions about the world as we thought it would look in 30 or 40 years’ time. We would also have to believe that the unilateral gesture would pave the way for a change in behaviour by other regimes. On the latter point, disarming would show a fundamental misunderstanding of the motivation of other regimes and groups that seek, or may in the future seek, nuclear capability. They do that to increase their capacity for aggression, not primarily because they fear the UK’s independent deterrent. On the former point, the pace of change has been so great in the past decade that we simply cannot possibly say with confidence that a deterrent will not be needed decades hence.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is demonstrating that he is probably the most knowledgeable Member on the issue of the deterrent. [Interruption.] I can see that the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) will get me afterwards.

Has my hon. Friend made any assessment of the Liberal Democrats’ current review of the deterrent and what the pitfalls might be?

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[John Woodcock]

That is a very important point with which I shall deal at some length in a moment. Suffice it to say for the moment that it is not simply the Liberal Democrats’ review; it is the Government’s review. They have commissioned it. The Conservative Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), looks like he is in two minds about it, but his own party’s former Defence Secretary sanctioned and announced it. The right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), was clearly not booted out because of that particular misdemeanour.

We have to ask whether it is right for the UK to maintain its independent deterrent. It strikes me as strange that it is often the very people who rail against the hegemony of the United States of America in world affairs who are prepared to sit quietly under its nuclear umbrella and suggest that the UK should not take responsibility for its own defence. I do not include my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) in that comment. I am glad to see him back in his place for my speech—I think.

We should redouble our efforts to tackle the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I am proud that the previous Labour Government were explicit in setting the ultimate target of zero nuclear weapons—of a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons—but we should not accept the argument that renewal is an act of proliferation. It is not. In fact, non-renewal would be an act of unilateral disarmament. It is right that our party has left those days behind.

Given the magnitude of destruction that the use of nuclear weapons would inflict, nuclear weapons are rightly an uncomfortable issue for all hon. Members and the country, but they are a deterrent. Our holding of nuclear capability is designed to make a nuclear war less not more likely. So far, that has been successful.

[Bob Stewart]

To slightly corrupt the saying, if we wish to avoid war, we should prepare for it and have the means to stop it. I fully support what the hon. Gentleman says about deterrence.

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right—he put it far more succinctly than I did and I am grateful to him for doing so.

I want to stress in the concluding part of my speech that the current Administration are creating a level of risk around the deterrent. That should be a matter of concern to Members on both sides of the House. As an aside, I hope the Minister who winds up could address the matter that was raised this week—

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

The Minister does not wind up.

[John Woodcock]

Oh, there are no wind-ups. Perhaps the Minister could find time to intervene in the short time remaining to make something clear. There are significant cuts to the MOD police. Do they mean that there are plans to reduce the MOD police presence at Faslane or Coulport? Would the Minister like to intervene?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)]

indicated dissent.

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[John Woodcock]

Okay. If he wants to write and make the position clear at a later stage, that is absolutely fine.

[Peter Luff]

indicated assent.

[John Woodcock]

On the risk that has been created around renewal, the alternatives to Trident review, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East referred, will be led by the Minister for the Armed Forces—it is a shame he cannot be here for the debate. Essentially, the review uses Government resources actively to explore the idea of adapting Astute class submarines for nuclear capability that falls far short of being a deterrent. That could be a cause of increased proliferation and could increase the risk of confusion. If a cruise missile is launched from a submarine at a point of war and the aggressor nation does not know whether it is nuclear or conventionally tipped, the prospects of escalation and horrible consequences increase. The Government have put that in train and we await the review.

In conclusion, the delay in the proposed in-service date of the successor to the deterrent is—it must be stressed—driven not by national security or primarily industrial concerns, but by a political fudge to delay the vote until the next Parliament. That creates increased costs for taxpayers because the overall cost of renewing our deterrent will increase. In addition, it risks stretching the life of the current Vanguard class submarine to the limit of safe operation. Pressure on the delivery timetable of the successor has been increased by putting political deals above the national interest.