Defence Spending

Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Ind)]

I strongly agree with what has just been said by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). I also pay particular tribute to the impressive and remarkable speech that we heard from the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), the Chairman of the Select Committee, who explained the practical implications of our situation in a very detailed and convincing way. I shall not repeat the points that he made, because they were made so well by him.

Let me begin by emphasising that this debate is not just about defence expenditure, but something far wider. If we continue to make cuts in our defence budget of the kind that are being contemplated, we shall find that we are making a profound and irreversible change not just to our defence capability, but to the ability of the United Kingdom to conduct a global foreign policy with authority, conviction and credibility. That, in essence, is the fundamental choice that we are being asked to contemplate.

We have had these cuts over a number of years. I have not until now criticised the Government for their defence cuts over the five years of this Parliament, for several reasons. First, I have recognised—as have most of us—that in a period of great austerity it is of course impossible to remove the contribution that the Ministry of Defence, given the size of its budget, might be able to make to resolving matters. I was privileged to serve as Secretary of State for Defence, and I had to implement defence cuts myself, so I am very conscious of the pressures that exist, and the need to try to find a way of resolving them.

[Richard Drax]

May I counter that argument by saying that, with defence, if we cut ships, regiments or planes, we cannot just reinvent them when we need them? It takes months or years to bring them back.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

My hon. Friend helps to take me to exactly the next point I was going to make. What also enabled me to modify my concerns—to not feel the need to speak out during those few years—was the way in which the MOD addressed the difficult decisions it had to make. To a considerable extent, it tried to preserve the major improvements to our overall capability —our carrier capability, for example, and the need to renew the Trident submarines because of our strategic requirements. A lot of the reductions were made in the areas of manpower. That is painful and difficult, but the reality is that if we had cancelled the carriers, they could never have been reintroduced. That would be gone for ever, with profound and permanent impacts on our maritime capability. When we reduce Army manpower, it is painful, but the changes can be reversed, if the resources are available and the need is there, over not too long a period. That will still be difficult, but it can be done without the implications that come from a major reduction in capability.

Perhaps the most important thing that reassured me—rightly, I hope—over the last five years was the clear assurance that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave that once we had resolved the immediate economic crisis, and had economic growth and economic development, there would be, as an absolute necessity, real-terms increases, year on year, in our defence expenditure. That was, so far as anything can seem to be a commitment, a commitment at the very highest levels of our Government five years ago, and we have been told ever since that that remains the Prime Minister’s view.

We face a most extraordinary situation. The Government say—I happen to agree with them—that the United Kingdom is going through a period of remarkable economic recovery. We are now one of the strongest economies in Europe, we are told; our economic growth is now higher than that of almost any other country in Europe, and our employment situation has improved. All these economic developments, which will rightly be very important in the forthcoming general election, are being shown as examples of how we have succeeded in our strategy, and how the UK is therefore stronger than many other countries in the western world. Yet ironically, simultaneously, precisely because our GDP is growing substantially, meeting that 2% requirement becomes that much more difficult, if not unattainable. It is a great irony that the more our economy improves, the more we seem likely to fall below the 2% requirement, when the reverse should be the case: if our economy is growing and doing well, it should be easier to find the resources required, because the revenues coming into Government will also increase considerably. That irony is not one that I have yet heard explained.

I hope that when the Minister winds up, he can reassure us on how we will benefit from the remarkable economic growth for which we are taking the credit. We certainly did not expect increases in defence spending when the economy was in a mess. Now it seems to be much healthier. I recognise that the budget deficit continues, but that is only part of the overall economic situation.

Something else worries me, too, and it has been mentioned by colleagues and those outside this House. Of course this 2% is a nominal figure, a totem, and it is the real resources that are important, but I find it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile a cavalier approach towards the 2% objective, which we have held for many years, with saying that overseas development is somehow untouchable, and indeed may have to be given statutory protection in the current economic circumstances. Indeed, it now has statutory protection of a kind that I find extraordinary. These are very curious situations.

The consequence of what is happening, particularly if it continues after the general election, will be not just pain for our armed forces and their capability, but an irreversible change to Britain’s ability to conduct a credible foreign policy. After the United States, our armed forces and those of France are unique around the world. We are the only other two countries that have been able to make a meaningful contribution—albeit that we come far behind the United States—to providing a global deployment of armed forces to assist with overall issues of global security. Our role and credibility in the Security Council of the United Nations as not just a member, but a permanent member, is because of our ability to contribute towards security. That is what the Security Council is all about.

Our foreign policy is conducted on the basis of three assets that we have: first, of course, our diplomatic capability, which is impressive, although it has been under considerable strain in recent years; secondly, our intelligence capability, which is strong, and I pay credit to the Government for the resources provided there; and, thirdly, our military capability. The UK’s military capability is in a serious condition, of a kind that we are all familiar with, and that has an impact on our diplomatic credibility.

I read some years ago a remark that I have used since—colleagues may have heard me use it. It is attributed to Frederick the Great: “Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.” That remains true, not because we will necessarily always wish to use our armed forces, but because if we are pursuing, with good faith, a desire to develop a political and diplomatic solution to some intractable problem—there is a perfect example in our relations with Russia and Mr Putin at present—the fact that we have as the ultimate back-stop a military capability has a significant and profound impact on the likelihood of our delivering the result that we are trying to obtain. However, if we are seen as once having had that military capability, but as having opted, as a deliberate act of Government policy, to reduce that capability so that it remains significant but is not in any profound sense impressive, we will have seriously reduced our diplomatic clout and made the ultimate problem that much greater.

It is always dangerous to draw comparisons with the 1930s, but we know perfectly well that those in Berlin who were planning aggression believed that the western democracies were incapable of providing the resources required for a strong defence, and that influenced their foreign policy. I am not saying that the threats that we face today are of that order, or that the individuals concerned are comparable to the people who led Germany at that time—of course that would be unfair—but the fundamental principle is nevertheless the same.

What I beg of the Government, or any Government who emerge after the general election, is that they do not ask the facile question, “Does this win votes? Are the public demanding it? Is this therefore something we must respond to, or it will hurt us politically?” If a Government have one justification in a democratic society, it is that they do not just follow, or seek to follow, public opinion, but occasionally recognise the need to lead public opinion, and to take decisions that may involve painful choices, and that may be difficult in terms of newspaper headlines, but may have profound and beneficial impacts on our ability to make our contribution to sorting out some of the problems of the world.

Looking around the world, there are very few countries indeed that combine strong democratic institutions, genuine respect for the rule of law, and a military capability that can help build up security, restore peace and achieve the global objectives with which this country has always been proud to be associated. Let it not be the legacy of this Government, or any Government who emerge after this election, that we can no longer say that or make that contribution, not because the public rejected the idea, but because politicians failed to provide the right level of leadership.

Deployment to Mali

Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman’s last point. The numbers that we have outlined are the numbers that we envisage sustaining the Sentinel aircraft based in Dakar, Senegal—about 70 people. That is the requirement to sustain the aircraft there. We have about 20 people on the ground in Bamako. The C-17 we envisage staying for up to three months. We have not set a time limit for the surveillance capability; it will stay for as long as we can provide it without impact on other operations and as long as it is useful. The training mission has not yet been defined, so it would be premature for me to talk about a time scale, but it clearly will be a finite time scale in preparing the African Anglophone nations’ forces for deployment to Mali.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

The liberation of Timbuktu and other towns in the north is, of course, very much to be welcomed, but my right hon. Friend will remember from the precedent of both Iraq and Afghanistan that the liberation of towns and cities is the easy part and that there is every probability that there will be many years of asymmetrical conflict in Mali unless a political solution is achieved. Will he advise the House whether he is having discussions with the Foreign Secretary to ensure that Britain can make a contribution that, in particular, would try to divide the jihadi terrorists from the other local insurgents who do not have international aspirations, thereby making the prospect of ultimate peace that much more foreshortened?

[Mr Hammond]

My right hon. and learned Friend is right of course to warn of the prospect of asymmetric conflict. Although it is reassuring that towns such as Timbuktu have been taken by French forces, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that that is equivalent to the defeat of the Islamist forces in the area. They have melted away and will, no doubt, regroup and return in one form or another.

My right hon. and learned Friend is also right in saying that the key strategic imperative is to separate the jihadists from those northern Malian rebels whose discontent with the Government is more secular in nature. There is some evidence that that is already happening and that the presence of Malian Government and French forces in the area will encourage and accelerate that process, but I can assure him that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is acutely aware of the need for rapid political progress, as well as rapid military progress.

Defence Responsibilities

Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I am not entirely sure what questions arise from that. The right hon. Gentleman asked why no civil service advice was sought before social and private meetings. The answer is that civil service advice is not sought before social and private meetings. He asked when the permanent secretary raised concerns. The permanent secretary raised the matter of the business cards with me in August. I told her that I had dealt with that in June when I first saw them. I demanded that they should not be used again and that any subsequent cards should not display either the portcullis or a reference to me as Secretary of State. The right hon. Gentleman has spent most of his time over the last few days focusing on the meeting in Dubai with Cellcrypt. I have set out how the meeting came about, what the conversations were during the meeting, what conversations did not take place, what Mr Boulter said did take place and the action I took as a consequence, which was to ask my private office for a full briefing. No commercial contracts were made and no financial gain was made as a result of any of those discussions. When a man who was involved in a blackmail case is feeding information to the media, which is often taken without question, it is rather difficult to take the shadow Secretary of State beginning his statement without telling us the specifics of the declaration he was making, which is that his Front Bench team took £10,000 from Cellcrypt, the company at the centre of all this, to visit the United States. I hope that today I have answered as many questions as I can; perhaps the shadow Secretary of State might want to answer some that arise for him.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

May I, as a former Defence Secretary, pay tribute to the robust and effective leadership that my right hon. Friend is giving, which I hope he will continue to give to a Ministry of Defence that has sadly drifted in recent years? With regard to what he said about links with Sri Lanka, may I, from my own personal knowledge going back to the time when he served with me in the Foreign Office, confirm that my right hon. Friend made sterling efforts to try to broker peace between the various factions in Sri Lanka? I think it is a tribute to his integrity and his qualities that he has continued to advance that cause in the years since.

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for that. A great deal of work is still to be done in Sri Lanka, and I am very pleased that I was able, eventually, to make an official visit as Secretary of State. I hope that the United Kingdom, with all its historical links to the country, will be able to use the levers at our disposal to try to bring peace to a region where, sadly, too little has been done in recent years to try to bring reconciliation.

Mull of Kintyre Review

Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

I am extremely grateful for what the shadow Secretary of State has said and the tone in which he presented it to the House.

When we look at the experience under previous Secretaries of State, we see that the inquiries that took place were perhaps not quite focusing on the correct point. In Lord Philip’s inquiry, he very quickly, with his team, went to the point of the matter on a legal basis—that is, as the shadow Secretary of State has said, they grasped that attributing gross negligence could be done only if there was no doubt. This was not about establishing something beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the test that most of us would expect normally to be applied—it was an absolutely objective test. Perhaps in previous inquiries we were looking into the details and missing the main point.

The right hon. Gentleman asked a number of very reasonable questions. In answer to his specific question about how the matter was handled at the time, I refer him to paragraph 7.2.2 of the report, which says:

“We were told that Flt Lt Tapper telephoned his Deputy Flight Commander on the evening before the delivery of ZD576 to Northern Ireland expressing concern that some time had passed since his conversion training. He felt unprepared to fly the aircraft. He had attempted to persuade the tasking authority to spread the load between more than one aircraft, but his request had been refused.”

Yes, there will be questions of compensation arising. I spoke today to some of the families involved, but I did not feel that today was the appropriate time to be talking about money when there are very serious points of principle and we are opening up a very difficult emotional period for the families. However, we will undoubtedly take this forward in the usual way with those families.

As regards details appearing in the media, the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that very many of those were completely wrong. I suspect that people were making educated guesses that turned out to be not so educated.

Finally, neither Lord Philip nor his team criticised the initial board of inquiry. The problem came with the reviewing officers who attributed gross negligence when the board of inquiry had not come to a specific conclusion about who or what was to blame for the crash.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

As Secretary of State for Defence at the time of the Chinook accident, and having given evidence to the Philip inquiry, may I say that I am delighted and relieved that this decision has been announced by the Secretary of State? It is a decision that is right, that is necessary, and that is long overdue. As the Royal Air Force decided some years ago that it was not going to continue to try to assess questions of negligence in its own internal inquiries because that was much more appropriately a matter for the courts of law, is it not very sad that the RAF and, indeed, the Ministry of Defence, despite changing their own procedures and despite the mounting evidence from many authoritative inquiries, have chosen to resist for 16 long years the annulment of this injustice, which arose out of these very procedures?

[Dr Fox]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his thanks for the decision that has been made. It is right, I think, that the RAF took the decision that questions of negligence and blame should be set aside in order to try to get to the truth of the cause of any particular accidents. It is very regrettable that it has taken such a long time to get to the situation today. However, it is none the less a tribute to many Members in this House who have felt that an injustice was being done. It shows the House of Commons at its best when pressure from the House of Commons can cause an injustice to be overturned.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Malcolm Rifkind Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is obviously right to raise what could be a very serious issue. The suggestions in the press, none of which have been confirmed, are that the decision to place the major contracts on Trident could be delayed until the next Parliament, which is presumably due to begin in 2015. As the major contracts at the moment are only expected to be signed in 2014, I hope he would agree that a 12-month delay would not be that serious and might allow the decision to be taken in a more favourable economic climate. If, on the other hand, the Government were contemplating a five-year delay beyond 2014, we would be in a very different situation.

[Mr Ainsworth]

Or even in a more favourable political climate. One of the difficulties is that people accept the reasonableness of what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said and do not think it is a very significant decision. He needs to research this matter because, when it comes to building submarines, we have slowed the drum beat down so much that our ability to slow it down further simply does not exist. There is already a gap and we will lose the capability, which we will have to recreate—if we want to do so—at considerable expense to the taxpayer. That will not be for years to come—it will not be in the next two or three years—but down the line the expense will be massive and the kind of overheating in the defence budget that the Chairman of the Defence Committee complains about will have been hugely exacerbated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Harvey]

Let me say this again: the decision on Trident has been taken. It was laid out in the coalition agreement, which made it perfectly clear:

“We will maintain Britain’s nuclear deterrent”

and, in due course, replace it. The value-for-money study, which is currently taking place but has yet to arrive at any decisions, may well consider the expenditure profile, and the order in which we programme different parts of the work, but I cannot speculate on that. However, the initial gate decision is on course to be made later this year or, at the latest, in the early part of next. We know that under the timetable, main gate will be at the tail end of 2014 or, possibly, in the early part of 2015; that is already known and understood. But, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) pertinently pointed out in his intervention, if main gate happened to shift a few months, it would not make any difference in terms of either finance or, frankly, the impact on the industrial base. So, the issue involves complete speculation and does not have the significance that one or two people have suggested it might.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I welcome the Minister’s extremely reassuring remarks. In that context, I note the intensive press reports stating that the Treasury has pressed for the capital costs of Trident to be met from—presumably—the existing core budget of the Ministry of Defence. Is that the case, and, if we are to have both a conventional military and the independent nuclear deterrent, is it possible?

[Nick Harvey]

I rather agreed with the right hon. Member for Coventry North East, who said that that point is largely academic: the cost all comes out of the Treasury as a whole, and the particular line on which it is accounted is neither here nor there. We would want to be clear that the funds for Trident were on a separate line from that of the core defence budget. That is what the White Paper said, and as I understand it, that is still the position. However, where precisely it is accounted is neither here nor there; it is a completely semantic and academic point.