British Indian Ocean Territory: Negotiations

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is completely right, but she knows that the Conservatives have got a leadership contest on, and this is a bit of a beauty parade. That is why they are stepping away from a negotiation that they began, had 11 rounds on and failed to deliver on.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Having heard the Foreign Secretary’s performance this afternoon, we now know why the Government did not dare announce this in the House of Commons. This abject surrender of British sovereign territory for nothing—that is what it is—risks a Chinese veto over a vital military facility. May I ask the Foreign Secretary how much in rent this country will now pay Mauritius for the right to lease back what is already ours? Which Government Department—the Ministry of Defence or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—will pay the landlord?

[Mr Lammy]

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned a Chinese veto. The Chinese do not have a veto in this House. The treaty will be scrutinised by this House. All Members will be able to look at it, debate it and reflect on it. Of course, at the time of publishing the treaty, there will be a discussion of the costs, but no basing agreements ever discuss costs, because that would damage our national security, and the Government are not prepared to do that.

International Immunities and Privileges

Mark Francois Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Catherine West)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Global Combat Air Programme International Government Organisation (Immunities and Privileges) Order 2024, which was laid before this House on 23 May, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.

It is my pleasure as the Minister responsible for the Indo-Pacific in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to speak on behalf of the Government. In December 2022, the UK, Japan and Italy launched the global combat air programme, known as GCAP, to deliver a next-generation aircraft by 2035. The Prime Minister reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to promoting co-operation and collaboration between the UK and Italy on 5 July with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and between the UK and Japan on 6 July with the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida. In the call to Japan, our Prime Minister concurred that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific are indivisible.

His Majesty’s Government are committed to ensuring the security of the Indo-Pacific, working closely with our allies. For the UK, the aircraft will sit at the heart of a wider system; it will be networked and will collaborate with a range of wider air capabilities, including the F-35, and broader military capabilities. It will use information systems, weapons and uncrewed collaborative combat air platforms to complete the capability. Replacing the capability provided by Typhoon, this system will sustain the UK’s operational advantage.

In addition, GCAP will attract investment in research and development on digital design and advanced manufacture processes, providing opportunities for our next generation of highly skilled engineers and technicians.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Catherine West]

I will continue, if the right hon. Gentleman allows.

The signing of the convention on the establishment of the GCAP international government organisation, commonly known as the GIGO, by the parties of the UK, Japan and Italy took place in December 2023 and was conducted by the Defence Secretaries of those three nations. The GIGO will function as the executive body, with the legal capacity to place contracts with industrial partners engaged in GCAP. Through the GIGO, the UK will lead on the development of an innovative stealth fighter jet with supersonic capability and equipped with cutting-edge technology, and will facilitate collaboration with key international partners that raise the profile of the UK’s combat air industrial capacity.

The GIGO headquarters will be based in the UK, employing personnel from the UK, Italy and Japan. The chief executive and director posts shall be filled by nationals of different parties according to a mechanism that shall preserve a balance between the parties. Given the nature of the GIGO as an international defence organisation, the Ministry of Defence, with support from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, has been leading on trilateral engagement and negotiations on its establishment. The convention, once in effect, will enable closer collaboration between the parties—the Governments of Japan, Italy and the UK—and support the development of His Majesty’s Government’s defence capabilities, stimulated by development of the UK-based headquarters. That will enable further collaboration with key industry partners, with the headquarters supporting hundreds of jobs, and working in close partnership with Rolls-Royce, Leonardo UK, MBDA UK, and hundreds of other companies across the UK in the supply chain, to deliver GCAP.

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[Catherine West]

To be clear to Members new and old, this instrument is the legal framework within which the programme will sit. It does not have specific funding recommendations attached to it because it is the scaffolding, or the nest, within which all the work will happen.

This order was laid before Parliament in draft on 23 May 2024. It is subject to the affirmative procedure and will be made by the Privy Council once it is approved by both Houses. Subject to approval and ratification, the treaty will enter into force on the deposit of the last instrument of ratification or acceptance of the parties. That is anticipated to be in autumn 2024 to meet the 2035 in-service date.

This order confers a bespoke set of privileges and immunities to enable the GIGO to operate effectively in the UK. The Government consider those privileges and immunities both necessary and appropriate to deliver on the interests and commitments that the UK has towards the organisation.

[Mr Francois]

I am not a Minister, but I was for three years. Will the Minister give way?

[Catherine West]

As the right hon. Gentleman has so much experience on the Defence Committee, I am happy to take his point.

[Mr Francois]

I thank the Minister for giving way. She is a Foreign Office Minister heading this up, I believe, not a Defence Minister, which is interesting, but it is an international agreement. Can she tell the House whether, because of the threat to the programme from the defence review, she has had any representations from the Japanese Government or the Italian Government, our two other major programme partners, to express their concern about any threat to GCAP?

[Catherine West]

The right hon. Gentleman asks an important question. I can confirm that this is the legal framework around which the programme will sit. I can also confirm that the Defence Secretary yesterday met with his Japanese counterparts at the show and they were able to have further interesting discussions. The right hon. Gentleman will be able to continue his questioning when he is surely once again a member of the Defence Committee in the autumn.

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[James Cartlidge]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question, but I do not regard it as a strange partnership. All my experience of dealing with GCAP and meeting my Italian and Japanese counterparts, particularly industry representatives from all three countries, and working so closely together—there is already so much work going on—tells me that this is about developing a brilliant platform that is needed by all three nations. There will always be a multiplicity of platforms from different countries, which I think is perfectly healthy. What is good about the hon. Gentleman’s question is that he has opened up the debate about sovereign capability, which I will come to shortly. I just wanted to finish my point about the uncrewed domain, and what it means to be sixth-generation.

[Mr Francois]

Before my hon. Friend does so, would he give way very briefly?

[James Cartlidge]

Of course—it is a pleasure.

[Mr Francois]

My hon. Friend was a very good Defence Procurement Minister, and we on the Committee liked him because, crikey, he actually answered the questions. He will know from that experience that even the Americans, who have a new thing called the next generation air dominance fighter, are struggling to afford it; there have been media reports in the US that they may even cancel that programme, because even the Americans cannot afford to do everything unilaterally anymore. In the light of that, does my hon. Friend believe that a three-way programme represents good value for money?

[James Cartlidge]

My right hon. Friend, who not only served on the Committee but was an Armed Forces Minister, makes an excellent point. There are those who argue that we should go beyond 2.5%; I would argue that 2.5% is still a significant jump for this country. We had a funded plan, and that 2.5%—crucially and critically, with the pathway we set out, which became an accumulation of significant additional billions of pounds for the MOD—enabled us to afford GCAP and stabilise that programme.

I want to make one crucial point about the uncrewed domain. To be frank, for the uncrewed side of the Navy, Army and Air Force, those programmes are not funded: hitherto, the funding has come primarily from support for Ukraine. That is entirely logical because, under the defence drone strategy, we were very clear that there is no point in the Army, for example, ordering large-scale drones now; it might order them to train with, but the technology is changing so fast. What we as a country need to build, as I set out in the drone strategy, is the ecosystem to develop those drones, and we are doing that.

I have always said—I said it during my statement on the integrated procurement model—that my most inspiring moment as Defence Procurement Minister was visiting a UK SME that was building a drone for use in Ukraine. It was a highly capable platform, but brilliantly, it was getting feedback and spiralling it—as we call it—the very next day. On GCAP, it should be a technology for the whole of defence—it should be a pan-defence technology of how we team with uncrewed systems, how the Navy fights with an uncrewed fleet above and below the surface, for the Army and of course for the Air Force.

I have two final points on military capability, as a couple of points have been floating around in the press. The first is that the Army is putting out its opposition to GCAP. I find that idea impossible to believe. Of course, if the Army wants to succeed, it needs the support of the Air Force and so on. That is why an integrated approach to procurement is so important, not single service competition. There has also been the point that we should choose between GCAP and AUKUS, as if, when the next war comes, the Russians will step into our dressing room and ask if we would like to bowl or bat: would we like to fight on land or sea—what is our preference? The fact is that we do not know where the threat will come from, but we know that it is growing, so we should support both GCAP and AUKUS, not least for the enormous economic benefit they bring.

You will be pleased to know, Mr Speaker, that that brings me to the last part of my speech, on the economic benefits of GCAP. There are those who say we should buy off the shelf. We would stress how, in a state of ever greater war readiness, it pays to have operational independence and sovereignty. In particular, investing in the great tradition of UK combat air offers huge economic gains for every part of the country.

In 2020, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that the Tempest programme alone would support an average of 20,000 jobs every year from 2026 until 2050. Those are well-paid jobs in every constituency up and down the country—including many in Lancashire, as you will know, Mr Speaker. Scrapping GCAP would hit our economy hard. Even delaying or deferring GCAP expenditure would undermine our brilliant aerospace industry, which was on display this past week at the Royal International Air Tattoo in Farnborough, and cast doubt over the vast sums of private investment that are waiting, from which hundreds of UK SMEs stand to benefit.

An interesting point was raised by the Leader of the Opposition when asking the Prime Minister about exports and discussions with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is an incredibly important point. I was clear that, in reforming procurement, we have to have exportability at the heart of it because otherwise industrial supply chains wither. It is as simple as that. The demand from this country is not big enough. This has been the French lesson for many years, which is why they have put so much effort into export, and we need to do the same—whether it is GCAP, or any other platforms or capability manufactured by the United Kingdom.

To undermine GCAP is to undermine our economy, our future war-fighting capability and relations with our closest international partners. The Government should instead embrace GCAP wholeheartedly and confirm that they stand by their previous position of steadfast support. Then they should commit to a clear timetable on 2.5%, so that we can turbocharge the programme by investing not only in the core platform, but in the associated technology of autonomous collaboration and a digital system of systems approach, enabling the mass and rapid absorption of battlespace data.

To conclude, the best way to win the next war is to deter it from happening in the first place. Part of our overall deterrence posture is to signal to our adversaries our preparedness to always be ready to out-compete their technology. How can we send that deterrent signal if we have such mixed messages on our largest conventional military programme? We support this statutory instrument, we support GCAP and we support the powerful gains it will give to the United Kingdom’s economic and military strength.

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[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I begin by congratulating you on your election and welcoming you to the Chair? I am sure that you will chair our proceedings excellently. We wish you all good luck.

May I also thank the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Mr Bailey) for a fine, fluent and—if I may say so—at times poignant maiden speech? He spoke well on behalf of his constituents. I have it on good authority that when my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) was the procurement Minister, the hon. Member took him on a tour of Brize Norton and helped to brief him on the A400M. My hon. Friend has asked me to pass on his thanks. As a former Army officer, may I say to a former RAF officer what a great pleasure it is to see the RAF turn up on time? There is indeed a first time for everything. [Laughter.]

The purpose of the order is laid out clearly in paragraph 4.1 of the explanatory memorandum, which states that it

“gives effect to the Convention between the Government of the Italian Republic, the Government of Japan and the Government of the United Kingdom…establishing the Global Combat Air Programme International Government Organisation signed on 14 December 2023”.

It points out that

“The Convention was negotiated by the Ministry of Defence.”

My third welcome is to the Minister; it is good to see her in her place. However, as the convention was nominated by the Ministry of Defence, could she explain for clarity why the FCDO and not the MOD is handling this statutory instrument?

The Minister kindly nominated me for a place on the House of Commons Defence Committee. As today appears to be a day for people taking up nominations, I will gladly accept that and announce that I am going to run—for that Committee.

I also point out that in the explanatory memorandum the policy context for the order—this is important—is described as follows:

“In December 2022, the Prime Ministers of UK, Japan and Italy launched GCAP to deliver a next generation aircraft by 2035. The signing of the GCAP Convention between the partners took place in December 2023 and was conducted by the respective Defence Secretaries of the three nations. The GIGO will function as the executive body with the legal capacity to place contracts with industrial partners engaged in the GCAP.”

So far, so good. The debate takes on some additional resonance, however, because we now have a defence review, which some people have interpreted as a sword of Damocles hanging over this important programme. My fourth welcome is to the new Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), who represents a military constituency; it is good to see him in his place, too.

A few minutes ago at Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister described GCAP as a “really important programme”. It is. It is good that he was able to go to Farnborough, see the mock-up of the aircraft for himself and receive a briefing.

When I served on the Defence Committee in the last Parliament, in March 2024 we travelled to Japan to examine the programme as best we could from the Japanese perspective. We spoke to politicians, civil servants, industrialists and the Japanese air self-defence force—its military. We were going to write what I believe would have been a very positive report, and then someone went and called a general election. We cannot blame the Minister for that, but she and some of her colleagues did somehow appear to benefit from it.

I would like to stress three themes from that trip, which came out strongly. The first was the absolute unanimity of purpose among the Japanese to deliver the programme. As one politician put it to us,

“We live in a tough neighbourhood, including three autocracies with nuclear weapons. We need to strengthen our defences, and this programme is fundamental to that.”

I think that is a very good summary of the Japanese perspective.

Secondly, we were struck by the willingness of the Japanese to consider third party exports of GCAP to make the aircraft affordable by increasing its production run. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk was always hot on that when he was the procurement Minister. For various historical reasons, I do not think that the Japanese would necessarily have taken that view even a few years ago; that is important.

Thirdly, the Japanese have an absolute determination to achieve the in-service date of 2035, which is referred to directly in the memorandum. The Japanese air self-defence force uses a mixture of F-15J Eagle aircraft and the F-2, which is sort of a souped-up version of the American F-16. They are both good and capable aircraft, but they are getting rather long in the tooth. The Japanese have to plan forward against a threat from the Chinese J-20 or the Russian Su-57. The risk is that by the mid-2030s those aircraft will be outmatched by those two powerful new combat aircraft.

Reference has been made to the F-35. It is a fine aircraft, but it is expensive to buy and very expensive to run. The Americans have found that to their cost—the F-35 was nicknamed by the American media

“the plane that ate the Pentagon”.

It might not necessarily be the answer to the Treasury’s dream. Moreover, for the record, deliveries of the F-35 to the United States forces were suspended for nearly a year—they have only just been resumed—because of problems in upgrading the computers and the software. If we are to talk about the realities, the F-35 has been quite a troubled programme and, to some extent, continues to be so.

What would be the implications of cancellation of GCAP? This is an international agreement and, as it says in paragraph 7 of the explanatory memorandum:

“No external consultation was undertaken as the instrument implements provisions of an international agreement to which the United Kingdom will be obliged to give effect as a matter of international law once it enters into force.”

The first implication were we to cancel it is that it would put back Anglo-Japanese relations and Anglo-Italian relations, arguably for decades. I would not want to be the CEO of a British company trying to sell something to the Japanese Government in the aftermath of the cancellation of GCAP. Secondly, given the scale and the prominence of the programme, there would be a serious risk that we in the United Kingdom would achieve a reputation as an unreliable partner in major military collaborative programmes—everything from AUKUS through to collaboration in space. In an era when things such as a sixth-generation combat aircraft are so expensive that, as I intimated earlier, even the Americans are struggling to afford one on their own, the reality for us as a medium power is that we need to collaborate. We would find it very difficult to find future partners if we suddenly cancelled such an important and sizeable programme for financial reasons.

Thirdly, it would make a nonsense of the UK’s so-called tilt to the Pacific, which was inherent to the so-called integrated review and was reinforced when the review was refreshed before the general election. How can we tilt to the Pacific if we then cancel a major collaborative programme with a critical Pacific partner, which faces challenges from Russia and China even more immediately than we do? Bluntly, our name would be mud in that theatre of operations if we were to do that.

Fourthly, there is what one might call the prosperity agenda. As they said in the King’s Speech, the Government are very committed to growth—let us not debate building and the green belt now, but focus on this issue. In the last few years, about 80% of the UK’s defence exports have come from combat air—mainly sales of Typhoon or our 15% workshare on the F-35. That has averaged roughly £6 billion a year. Again, what would be the threat to our exports and our reputation as a reliable supplier if we were to cancel the programme?

What should we do? The GIGO, which this memorandum establishes, will incorporate prominent representatives from all three countries—the UK, Japan and Italy—and it will be headquartered here. If the programme is to survive, which I strongly believe it should, the GIGO has a vital role to play as the management organisation. It will have to be leaner and less bureaucratic than its predecessor organisations, which oversaw the Tornado and Typhoon programmes—two wonderful aircraft with a proud heritage in the Royal Air Force. I think everyone in the industry would admit that those organisations were a bit too bureaucratic.

The GIGO will have to be a lot leaner and meaner to get the job done. The principal industrial partners—BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Leonardo, among others—will have a real challenge. Historically, the answer to such a dilemma might have been, “Look, it’s a very complicated programme. It will take years to achieve, and it all depends on how many countries join, how many aircraft they buy and what configuration they go for. Will the Saudis participate? Will they want it built in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia if they do participate? There are lots of imponderables, so we will come back to you in about five years’ time with a unit price.” That will not wash. I would submit that one of the first tasks of the GIGO, working with those industrial partners and the three Governments, is to come up with at least a realistic pricing envelope for the programme, which the Treasury can look at and, hopefully, take a positive view on. If they do not do that, there can be no blank cheque, even for this.

To conclude, there is no such thing as an uncancellable defence programme—although I still hope for Ajax—but this comes close. To cancel this programme for short-term financial reasons would be a disaster militarily, politically, diplomatically and industrially. If it comes down to GCAP, AUKUS or Ajax, for me, Ajax has to go, and I say that as a former soldier. We need to understand how extremely serious the implications are of cancelling this programme.

I was a soldier, but the Royal Air Force has a proud tradition in the defence of this country and its interests, going back to the Battle of Britain and the first world war—when it grew out of the Army, I hasten to say.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

And the Navy.

[Mr Francois]

And the Navy, in which my father served, for completeness. The Royal Air Force needs this aircraft. We need it. The Japanese, the Italians and the west need it. By all means, let us control the costs, but let us keep it. We are not going to scrap the Spitfire of the future.

[Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I look forward to you extending your authority to unruly fourth parties, even if they are new to that role.

I welcome this statutory instrument, which gives effect to the convention on the establishment of GCAP. GCAP is not important but vital to a range of different priorities, to which I urge the new Government to pay very close attention. It is vital to the United Kingdom’s ability to play its role in defending our values against peer or near-peer adversaries and the threats that they present to our way of life. We will not do that in the very near future if we cannot command a sixth-generation capability. It is vital to developing and maintaining sovereign air capability. If we had no legacy of manufacturing complex combat air systems, we could not start it. That enterprise cannot be begun from nothing.

The flipside of that inevitable truth is that if we neglect what we have developed, at great cost to the public purse over the past 100 years, we defeat the legacy of world-leading extraordinary aircraft, civil and military, that have come out of the United Kingdom over the past 100 years. We also create an extraordinary gap in our ability to defend the realm—the first duty of any Government. The programme is vital for the 600 stakeholders in the UK alone who have been engaged with GCAP to date, and it has not even got up to speed yet. Those are just a few elements of why this is vital. In a geographical sense, it is extraordinarily important to defence manufacturers in the central belt of Scotland and the north-west of England, but I see no reason to disbelieve the claim that it has positive effects for constituencies all across the United Kingdom.

I seek to impress on the Minister for the Armed Forces—who I know gets it, and I am glad that he is here today—that he should challenge any rise in Treasury dogma when it comes to GCAP. It is an opportunity for the United Kingdom to repeat the world-leading performance of Harrier and the Blackburn Buccaneer, the extraordinary capabilities of the Panavia Tornado and the exceptional abilities of the BAE Typhoon. That is what it can do. What it expressly must not do is repeat the incredibly self-defeating cost to the public purse and defence capability of the TSR-2 fiasco in the 1960s. Unfortunately, an incoming Labour Government scrapped that at huge cost to our defence capability and huge cost to the public purse. It was a demonstrable exercise in a Treasury obsessed with the price of everything and myopic about the value of everything. I repeat, in case I sound political, that I know the Minister for the Armed Forces gets it. We trust him to do the right thing.

[Mr Francois]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to highlight what happened to TSR-2, which was a generation ahead of its time and a world beater. It was scrapped because the Treasury wanted to buy the F-111 instead, which was an American aircraft, and then it did not end up buying it. There is a lesson from history there too, is there not?

[Dave Doogan]

If we take, as the United Kingdom has, an extraordinarily complex programme somewhere down the road, then the opportunity cost, much less the financial and operability cost, of turning back on that must be well set out. I am afraid that those are the details the Treasury has a history of not being that interested in. It is more focused on the number at the bottom right-hand side of the balance sheet, but this is far too important to yield to that level of priority.

It is much to be regretted that the future combat air system and GCAP are proceeding in the European theatre in parallel. That is a grossly expensive duplication. I greatly fear that there is nothing we can do about it now. Nevertheless, it is much to be regretted. I am not certain that the partners in the competing French-led FCAS programme will be happy partners throughout, but that remains to be seen. The Minister for the Armed Forces must ensure that the door is left open for any latecomers or laggards who want to get on board with GCAP. I would appreciate his assurance, either today or at a later date, on that willing acceptability and acceptance.

As it is a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Minister who is leading today, let me say that the one thing the extraordinary aircraft I listed did not enjoy was particularly healthy export success. GCAP must have exceptional export success because, quite apart from the standard avionics engines and air frames that we have to deal with in conventional traditional aircraft, this aircraft is a breed apart in terms of its electronic warfare capability. It is a combat system, which happens to be in an aircraft, that is extraordinarily expensive. If the price of that is left to the Italians, the UK and the Japanese, we will face no small measure of difficulty.

On the statutory instrument itself, article 34(2) of the convention makes provision for host countries experiencing “serious balance of payment” issues. I draw Members’ attention to the sovereign debt liabilities of both Japan and Italy—and the UK itself, although it would be the third of that list. But the convention merely seeks—to inform the Minister—to “consult” in such circumstances. It would be appreciated if we could know what type of consultation that would involve. Further, article 19(1)(c) clarifies that funding from each party will

“be set out in a further arrangement”.

However, the convention does set out that the steering committee will have equal representation from each of the parties. How will the convention decide what the funding will be based on? Will it be based on orders, or on the number of national employees employed in the steering committee? How will that work? It is unclear.

In closing, Leonardo in Edinburgh is the brain and nerve centre of GCAP; it is the central nervous system of this world-leading capability. The system is being designed and finalised in Edinburgh, and it will be built in Edinburgh at Leonardo. That brings me on to the final provision in the SI, which states that the headquarters of GIGO will be established at a later date, but that it will be in the UK. It is really important that wherever it is established, it has close connectivity with the key prime manufacturers of GCAP: Rolls-Royce, Thales, BAE and Leonardo. It must be in a part of this island where an outstanding quality of life can be enjoyed, with access to good schools, good quality of life, transport infrastructure, an international airport and good links with London. That place is Edinburgh.

Situation in the Red Sea

Mark Francois Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

As ever, my hon. Friend raises an excellent point. That is what Operation Prosperity Guardian is all about: that taskforce enables shipping to be protected to an extent. He may be getting at the broader point of whether individual ships should be protected. The view that the world has taken is that Prosperity Guardian provides an umbrella to shipping more widely. The sheer volume of ordinary traffic through the Red sea means that we need that US-led international taskforce for the security of the Red sea and the gulf of Aden.

This is incredibly important. After all, we are part of defending the international rules-based order in the actions that we are taking. Last week, I was onboard HMS Diamond—which is right at the heart of the issue in the Red sea—talking to our brave sailors who are out there protecting our critical sea lanes. The House will know that this is the first Royal Navy ship’s company for 32 years who have fired in anger—or in self-defence, in their case. It was fascinating to talk to them about their experience and to witness their professionalism in dealing with this challenge.

It really did not have to be this way. We worked hard to warn the Houthis off. At the start of the year, the world sent a very clear message to the Houthis: “End your illegal and unjustified actions. Stop risking innocent lives. Please stop illegally detaining vessels and crews. Cease threatening the global economy.” All those warnings fell on deaf ears, and eventually enough was enough.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I completely support the Government’s action, which is totally in accordance with international law and defending freedom of navigation on the high seas, but we can only do it with people; otherwise, there will be no one to maintain the Typhoons or crew the warships. People are leaving three times as fast as we are recruiting, as the Secretary of State is aware. Will he commit to coming to the House before Easter to make a statement on what we are doing about the retention of critical armed forces personnel? He knows why it is important.

[Grant Shapps]

My right hon. Friend has been very solid on these issues, which he and I have spoken about in the Defence Committee and elsewhere. He will be pleased to know that I have recently held meetings with individuals he believes will help to resolve the issue. In common with many western militaries, I am working very hard to ensure that we have the men and women we need in our armed forces, skilled up to the right levels and capable of taking on this challenge. He will be reassured to know that I went to Akrotiri last week and met the Typhoon pilots. They are incredibly highly skilled, and backed by an enormous array of tanker pilots, ground crew, mechanics and many others. It is very important that we support them. I am working very hard on this, and will come back to my right hon. Friend, the Defence Committee and the House with future plans to back up what Haythornthwaite and others have proposed.

A fortnight ago, the Prime Minister, relevant Cabinet Ministers and I authorised the RAF precision strikes using four Typhoon FGR4s, supported by two Voyager air-refuelling tankers. They struck facilities at Bani in north-western Yemen and an airfield at Abbs. The sites had been used to launch reconnaissance and attack drones as well as cruise missiles over the Red sea, and they were destroyed. Let me reiterate what has been said before: this was limited, necessary and proportionate. It was done in self-defence in response to very specific threats and in line with international law.

Integrated Review Refresh

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

The right hon. Gentleman seems have embedded in his question the idea that our posture to the Indo-Pacific is a one-off event. It is not; it is a permanent recalibration of our foreign and defence policy. My first set of bilateral visits as Foreign Secretary was to Japan, South Korea and Singapore. The Defence Secretary is flying to Japan at the moment to build upon the agreement that we have made between the UK, Italian and Japanese Governments. We have made a long-term commitment that is being resourced. The carrier strike group’s main voyage to the region is building towards what is a permanent recalibration of our international focus, to recognise that the centre of gravity of world affairs is moving eastwards and southwards. We are responding to that.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s crystal-clear commitment that from 2025 we will spend 2.5% of our GDP on defence. I will be interested to know whether Labour will match that. Part of that spending, referred to in the document, is the AUKUS programme, which will be a world-class collaboration between the United States, Australia and us. Does he agree that that not only will help deter Chinese expansionism in the Pacific, but is a perfect example of global Britain?

[James Cleverly]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. When I was running through the list of things that underpin our Indo-Pacific focus, I did not mention AUKUS, because I know that the Prime Minister will do so extensively later on today. My right hon. Friend asked whether I think the Labour party will match that commitment of 2.5% on defence spending. I say no, for two reasons: first, no shadow Defence Minister has made such a commitment; and secondly, the Labour party will not be office in 2025—we will.

Ukraine

Mark Francois Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I start by echoing much of what has been said. It is very rare for us in this place to be in accord with one another—would that it was not the case that we had to talk about this at all, but it is, and on Ukraine we are in full accord.

I want to touch on some international comparisons. Estonia proposes an EU-wide ammunition purchase programme for supplying Ukraine. It would not have to be through the EU—pan-European or pan-NATO is probably a more helpful term in this legislature—but we need something to increase the co-ordination and depth of the ongoing ammunition delivery programme. I do not want in any way to undermine that which has been achieved, but it is quite clear that Russia is looking to prosecute a war of attrition for a very long time, and it would be helpful to demonstrate to the Kremlin that the west will meet that with renewed resurgence in its supplies to Ukraine.

Of course, doing so depletes the United Kingdom’s defence supplies and the supply chain has been caught short. That is not their fault, but the fault of a slightly less than strategic defence procurement plan—dating back many Defence Procurement Ministers, I hasten to add. We must ensure that we step that up at renewed pace. Interestingly, Norway has passed a five-year, £6.15 billion Ukraine support package and the terms on which it will be expended will be decided in concert with those in Ukraine. I wonder whether the UK should seek to emulate that, with ringfenced, dedicated funds over the next five years to send, again, a strong message.

I am not suggesting to the Foreign Secretary that the UK has not chipped in—of course it has, with many billions of pounds and no small measure of moral support as well—but such measures would help to show Putin that we are not going away and we are not shrinking from the challenge, however he wishes to present it. Canada, as other hon. Members have touched on, has changed its law to allow the seizure of Russian funds and started the process of seizing a first batch of frozen funds to send to Ukraine. The UK should follow suit in short order.

What progress has the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office made with our friends in India, to demonstrate to them that it is not acceptable to ride two horses in this way and that Russia’s criminality cannot just be dealt with by turning a blind eye or holding their nose on the altar of cheap oil prices? It is either in the rules-based international system, or it is not; I wonder whether that information has been conveyed to India in the most robust terms by the United Kingdom.

China is a concern. We in the west need to develop a narrative that goes beyond cultural differences, that is not open to interpretation and that lays out extremely clearly to Beijing that, if it were ever to make the miscalculation to supply Russia with arms, munitions and other supplies that would help it to prolong this egregious invasion of Ukraine, that would be met with very significant consequences from the west. I would be interested to know what the United Kingdom Government are doing in that respect.

I will get on to air power in a minute, but the threat of escalation by Russia is material and we should concentrate closely on it. Over the last 12 months we have, perhaps understandably, mithered over the definition of whether something is lethal or defensive, whether it is tactical or strategic, and now, we have moved that on to air power. Ukraine has received an extraordinarily large amount of financial support and military assistance, but there is a pattern perhaps coming into view whereby Ukraine gets the weapons it was previously asking for while it is asking for the next set of weapons. We should redouble our focus on what, whether or which we can do to support Ukraine with air power.

In terms of logistics, as I have mentioned, the west, or certainly the United Kingdom, is running out of surplus or even stores in ready use and further equipment purchases will need to be made. However, I do not have confidence that the supply chain of the defence procurement apparatus as it exists currently in the United Kingdom is up to that job. I would welcome any reassurance that the Secretary of State can give me in that regard.

We should commit to a multi-year spending package of ringfenced money to support Ukraine; again, that would provide the clearest possible message. I am pleased, to a certain extent, that the United Kingdom is training combat pilots for Ukraine, but I am left wondering to what end. I also wonder what is happening to the combat pilots in training with the Royal Air Force, some of whom—I am not making this up—are having to wait eight or even nine years to become qualified. What is the knock-on effect of training Ukraine’s combat air pilots? That is not to say that it is not the right thing to do, but every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and we should see the whole picture before we celebrate perhaps prematurely.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

The fast-jet training programme that the hon. Gentleman is referring to, which is known as the military flying training system, is broken and everyone involved in aviation knows it. But we also have some tranche 1 Typhoons that have a lot of time left in their airframes and are sitting in a warehouse having been taken out of RAF service. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if given to the Ukrainians, a squadron of those could do a lot more to defend freedom, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) suggested a few moments ago, than it could sitting in a warehouse gathering dust?

[Dave Doogan]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. He asks whether I agree with him, and I am afraid that I do not. My understanding is that although tranche 1 Typhoons may have hours left, by the time the penalty factor for what they did when they were flying is applied, there would not be many hours left. They may look like Typhoons, but their combat air systems are very old, and they are perhaps not exactly what Ukraine is looking for. That is nevertheless a valid point, and it leads me directly to my next point.

Not a single Typhoon in the United Kingdom is available for use by Ukraine, which makes me wonder what we are training its pilots on—unless we are training them on NATO combat air standard protocol. That is all we can do, because they will not be getting Typhoons—mark my words—and they do not actually want Typhoons. People talk about getting pilots for Ukraine, but pilots are just the tip of the arrowhead. They need maintenance crews, avionics specialists, refuellers and armourers. The logistic tail for a fourth-generation combat aircraft is enormously long, and none is quite as long as the Typhoon’s. What Ukraine actually needs is something more akin to the Gripen or the F-16, and the United Kingdom does not have any of those. That means that the United Kingdom is just part of the puzzle of working with allies in NATO and in Europe. The Gripen in particular is ideally suited to the types of facilities that Ukraine will be able to operate from.

The Secretary of State said that Ukraine must “take back more land.” I wonder how he intends for Ukraine to do that without exercising air superiority. There will be a spring offensive, as I think most Members agree. We need to make sure that that offensive belongs to Ukraine.

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[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to follow the excellent speech of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), as well as that of the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy).

I will add three points to the debate: first, on the importance of how we break the balance of force that we see arranged on the ground; secondly, on how we choke the oligarchs of war who are helping to supply Putin’s war machine; and thirdly, on how we commence the pursuit of justice. There is more to say about that, because I was unhappy to hear the Foreign Secretary, who is just leaving his place, not row in behind the Vice President of the United States and say that our Government had also arrived at the conclusion that Russia was committing crimes against humanity. One has to ask, how much more evidence do they really need?

We have heard the call loud and clear from two former Prime Ministers about the need to supply what Ukraine needs now. The truth is that both sides of the conflict will find it difficult to summon the 400,000 to 500,000 troops necessary to make a breakthrough one way or the other, so the challenge that may lie ahead is that Ukraine continues to suffer the pattern of more and more troops being thrown into infantry attacks under artillery fire in the east of the country and endless missile strikes on population centres. That is a grinding, terrible waste of life.

We have to leapfrog out of this bad habit that we have gotten into where first we say no, then we say yes, with an extended time period in between. On air defence, we said no to Patriot missiles until we said yes. On tanks, we said no until, months and months later, we said yes. Now, can we please just short-circuit the process and send the F-16s as fast as possible, with trained pilots? It is great to hear that we are training pilots, but at last week’s Munich security conference there was a clear consensus among Democrats and Republicans to send a very clear message to the President of the United States that it was time that fast jets were sent to support our allies in Ukraine. We heard directly from President Zelensky, just a few yards from this Chamber, that the wings of freedom are needed today, so let us jump out of the no and get to yes as fast as possible.

[Mr Francois]

We gave 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. Those are very capable tanks, but in and of themselves they will not change the whole course of the war. What they did do, however, was help unlock the delivery of hundreds of Leopards. What the Ukrainians really want are MiGs, which they are familiar with using, and F-16s. By the same argument, if we gave one squadron of older Typhoons that then unlocked hundreds of MiGs and F-16s, that would be worth doing, would it not?

Russia’s Grand Strategy

Mark Francois Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I regard the United States as our closest and most important ally and personally I love the United States of America, but on its response to this crisis—it has been voluminous compared with that of the rest of Europe and a lot of money has been devoted to it—its signalling has been very weak. What matters in wartime is not what red lines we set; it is what we actually do.

I am afraid our own Government made a terrible error when we set a red line about the use of chemical weapons in Syria in 2013, and then what did we do? We backed off when chemical weapons were used. The effect of that has been to weaken the influence of the United States, the United Kingdom and the whole of the west in the countries that really count in this war as potential allies or neutral states—for example, the Gulf states, which despaired of our lack of resolve in that conflict. Red lines are less important than what we do, and what we must now do is send far more matériel into this conflict to support the Ukrainians, so that the Russians are deterred or fail to achieve what they attempt to do.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

On my hon. Friend’s point about doing as opposed to just saying, with which I entirely agree, does he agree with me that part of this is that the German Government should now release their legal hold over the export of Leopard tanks from European allies to the Ukrainians to allow them a chance to counter-attack?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I certainly think that is the case, and I think the constant fear of our escalating the conflict has been misplaced because Putin has escalated the conflict anyway. There is nothing we can do to prevent him from escalating. In fact, the signal we have sent by being too timid and too slow in sending support into Ukraine has encouraged him to escalate. There is no deterrence in timidity, which is what too many western Governments have shown.

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[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I agree with nearly everything the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) has just said, but I am going to make a very different speech, not to disagree with him, but just to put a different tone to this. I have believed for a long time that it is essential to Russia’s grand strategy that it must expand: we knew that in 2008 and again in 2014, and, frankly, we should all have been thoroughly aware of it long before 24 February 2022 when the second invasion of Ukraine happened. I am absolutely clear that we must make sure that Putin and the Russian Federation loses.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to get more materiel to our friends and allies in Ukraine. I do not, however, think that is just a matter for the UK and I worry that sometimes the UK provides, let us say, 12 tanks and Spain provides two and France provides three and none of them work together. The time has come for us all to sit down as allies and ask how we are going to ramp up production of perhaps one or two brands of tank so we are deliberately and solely constructing them to get them to Ukraine as fast as possible. People have been arguing for that for at least a year now, so it is a shame we have not got on with it.

[Mr Francois]

The hon. Gentleman is right because logistically that would make it far easier for the Ukrainians. Leopard is the obvious choice because it is used by so many other allied countries, but German export law currently prevents that unless the Germans waive it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that they should do that to allow the Ukrainians the Leopards they need?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

Yes. I do not do this very often but I was saying “Hear, hear” earlier in agreement with a point the right hon. Gentleman made. I am reluctant to be too down on the Germans, however, for the simple reason that they have had to make a very dramatic and sudden about-turn in their whole understanding of their defence policy, but they do have to get over this hurdle. Many other countries in Europe want them to and are eagerly pressing them to, and the time is long past for them to do so. Perhaps we need a European security treaty to deal with some of these issues and get that materiel to where it is most needed and in a way that it can be readily used.

I want to talk about something slightly different: how we can help Ukraine rebuild. So far, along with many other countries in Europe, we have frozen but not seized assets. On 9 September 2022 a joint statement by the World Bank, the European Commission and the Government of Ukraine estimated that the current cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine was $349 billion. That is now a four-month-old estimate and the sum will grow exponentially as the war continues. We have all seen the pictures of what has happened in Dnipro; we know of the railways, roads and bridges that will have to be reconstructed, let alone the schools, the housing and the rest. Ukraine is going to need a very substantial amount of money.

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[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I congratulate my fellow Essex MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), on securing this vital debate and on ably introducing it. As he rightly reminded us, we debated Russia’s grand strategy just over a year ago, on 6 January 2022. During that debate, several Defence Committee members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Stuart Anderson), predicted that Russia was increasingly likely to invade Ukraine.

The Chair of the Committee, who spoke well again this afternoon, particularly—I am sad to have to say—about weaknesses in British Army equipment, presciently reminded the House about Russia’s actions:

“All this, of course, is unacceptable to the west and to NATO members, which makes the prospect of an invasion ever more likely. That is the immediate threat to Ukraine.”—[Official Report, 6 January 2022; Vol. 706, c. 220.]

In the same debate, I said:

“I fear that the European skies are now darkening, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the winter weather…Russians traditionally admire strength and despise weakness, and what they now perceive is a weakened NATO lacking in resolve to assert its democratic right to collective self-defence. The next few weeks are likely to be very telling in that respect.”—[Official Report, 6 January 2022; Vol. 706, c. 229-30.]

At the time, some commentators laughed at us or derided us at hawks, but in the phrase immortalised by Nigel Farage, “they’re not laughing now.” Barely a fortnight later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

Interestingly, especially given that Ukraine abandoned its arsenal of ex-Soviet nuclear weapons after the break-up of the USSR, we hear little these days from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or many of the others who naively argued for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom and our allies. Even unilateralist SNP Members, who are no longer in the Chamber—perhaps they are preoccupied by their private civil war about independence and identity politics—have recently become somewhat subdued on that point. The sorts of people Lenin once described as “wise fools”—so-called intellectuals who help to make Russia’s arguments for it—are now predominantly keeping their heads firmly below the parapet, at least while Russia continues to commit the most appalling atrocities against unarmed civilians, including women and children, on an almost daily basis.

Nevertheless, the invasion of Ukraine has proved a disaster for Russia and its people, if not yet for its President. Russia has become a pariah state; even China and India are softening their supportive rhetoric and would clearly like to see an end to the war. Even if President Putin were to be removed from office tomorrow, however, for whatever reason, we could not realistically expect the sudden release of Alexei Navalny and the flowering of liberal democracy in a country that simply has no such enduring political tradition throughout its entire history. For most Russians, even now, the brief easing-up under President Yeltsin was a rather chaotic aberration that lasted only a few years and was completely at variance with the historical paradigm of highly authoritarian rulers, stretching back centuries to Peter the Great or beyond. Part of Russia’s grand strategy for hundreds of years has been that of highly autocratic rule over a relatively servile population. So we would be naive in the extreme to believe, even if Putin were to be deposed, that we could drop our guard against a highly aggressive and militarised state—one with no compunction whatever about killing civilians or committing barbaric war crimes, and which retains thousands of nuclear weapons to this day.

That prompts the question: what should our own grand strategy be in response? Obviously, unlike Ukraine, which gave up its—something it must now bitterly regret—we should maintain our own nuclear deterrent as the ultimate guarantee of our security. We should strengthen the cohesion of the NATO alliance, including welcoming in Finland and Sweden as rapidly as possible. We should also encourage our NATO allies to significantly increase their supplies of equipment, also now including heavy armour, to the Ukrainians, who are ultimately fighting for our freedom, too. So the Germans simply must stop passing the buck, if for no other reason than that, if they carry on like this, no one will ever buy military equipment from them ever again.

Put bluntly, if we do not stop the Russians in Ukraine, we will have to stop them in the Baltic states or in Poland, and that means an all-out conflict between Russia and NATO, which is far better avoided, not least by Germany itself. The respected NATO secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, has recently warned that the conflict in Ukraine could lead to NATO being dragged in. As he put it in an interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK on 9 December last year:

“It is a terrible war in Ukraine. It is also a war that can become a full-fledged war that spreads into a major war between NATO and Russia. If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong.”

He is right.

The United Kingdom Government’s—our Government’s —own integrated review, published in the spring of 2021, correctly identified Russia as our major adversary, but it has since clearly been overtaken by events. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a total game changer in security terms, so the whole planning paradigm through which the ongoing refresh of the integrated review is being conducted has to alter accordingly. The integrated review took too much risk up front in order to strengthen our defences in a decade’s time—time that we may no longer have. We made a similar conceptual mistake with the 10-year rule of the 1920s and early 1930s and we cannot afford to repeat that error.

As time is short today—in more ways than one—suffice it to say that we now need to rethink our whole approach to a shooting war with Russia, potentially even some time this year and not in 10 years’ time. That means new thinking conceptually, strategically, militarily and industrially, coupled with a genuine sense of urgency—we need to get on with it—to examine how prepared we really are to fight a possibly protracted conflict with Russia. All this is just in case Trotsky was right when he famously warned:

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

In summary, if we are to deter a wider war, rather than have to fight it, which I am sure is what the whole House and indeed the country would prefer, that means having armed forces that are highly trained, brilliantly equipped and backed up with clear political intent to use them, if required. That means increasing not just our defence spending, though we must, but our preparedness to fight with minimum further strategic or even operational warning. It also means ruthlessly examining our broken procurement system and asking how many long-delayed key programmes can now be rapidly accelerated as urgent operational requirements. Frankly, we will not deter a man like Vladimir Putin with £4 billion tank programmes that do not work, submarines that are years late, frigates that are even later, destroyers and aircraft carriers that keep breaking down, or airborne early warning systems that are years overdue and do not even work properly when they turn up.

The Romans, who knew a thing or two about armed conflict, had a saying: si vis pacem, parra bellum—he who desires peace should prepare for war. That could almost be NATO’s unofficial motto today. If we genuinely desire peace in Europe, which we all do, we had better start realistically, not just theoretically, and urgently preparing to fight for it—just in case.

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[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), who is a great expert on Ukraine in this place. In fact, the only time I have visited Ukraine was when we went to Kyiv together—over a decade ago, I regret to say.

This is the first time I have spoken in a debate on Russian grand strategy, so I do not have the pedigree of most of the other speakers today, certainly those on the Government Benches. There is a reason for that. Before I get on to my main remarks, I want to point briefly to where I think this House has had some responsibility for allowing Russia under Putin to develop its strategy. It goes back to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), whom I should have congratulated on securing this debate—nobody knows more about strategy and its absence in this country than he does. He is doing a lot of work to try to put that right.

My hon. Friend referred to the vote in this House in 2013, in which I participated. To the great shame of this House and this country, we decided not to take action when Assad used chemical weapons on his own people in Syria. I believe that that vote led to Obama’s decision that it was not appropriate for the Americans to go it alone in taking action, even though the red line that had been talked about had been crossed. I think that that was one of the most important of the many triggers that allowed Putin to take the action that he did in 2014 by invading Crimea and the Donbas, from which the subsequent invasion has flowed.

Following the invasion, the EU decided in 2015 to put sanctions on 89 Russian officials. In response, Putin imposed sanctions on 89 officials in the European Union, of whom I was one; I think I am the only remaining Member who was sanctioned by Russia in 2015. I have chosen not to speak in debates on Russia for that reason—I did not want to highlight the fact, feeling that that would not be the right thing to do. Since this latest action, of course, almost every Member has been sanctioned and it is no longer quite the badge of honour that it once was. I feel in good company now, and I am very grateful to Mr Putin for making me feel slightly less lonely.

I want to focus most of my remarks on what we can do as a nation at this stage, but before that it is worth building on what was said by other speakers about the totally bogus narrative. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon said, Putin has created a narrative for not just domestic—although that is probably the primary objective—but international consumption. He has used the narrative of wanting to restore Russia to its rightful historical place as one of the great powers by undoing the damage from the collapse of the Soviet Union to win diplomatic support internationally. He has done that in a subtle way over a long period.

I point to Russia’s joining OPEC to form OPEC Plus in 2016 as a pivotal moment. Russia has used its oil and gas position and wealth to not only fund its war effort but work within international forums to frustrate attempts—particularly by the United States, but also by the United Kingdom—to encourage other OPEC members to increase production in response to the energy crisis caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia persuaded them to do the reverse, to decrease production, thereby keeping up the oil price and helping to fund his war effort. That was an effective mechanism he deployed using the status of victim and NATO being the aggressor, and the bogus narrative that others have spoken of. That was a critical step. It is really important that we, in leading international efforts to help Ukraine, work across international forums with our friends in the Gulf to point out to them that Russia is not their friend. They may have been somewhat disturbed by the west’s approach to the protection of Gulf states, in particular the American oscillation over its relationships as it pivots to Asia, but the Gulf states are fearful most of all of the threat of Iran. Iran has demonstrated very, very graphically, through its support for Russia and the provision of military capability to Russia, which has been deployed effectively in Ukraine, that it is no friend of the Gulf. Iran is friends with Russia, and other nations need to come together with traditional western allies who are their real friends.

I want to focus my few remaining remarks on what we can do as a nation right now. I draw the attention of the House and the Minister to the refresh of the integrated review, which others—notably my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), the Chair of the Defence Committee, in a powerful contribution—have already raised. It is an opportunity to try to reflect on the new strategic reality. I was involved in the strategic defence and security review in 2015, and we had the integrated review in 2021. In neither case was war in Europe an active reality when those reviews were conducted. We need to recognise that the peace dividend that we as a nation and other western nations banked in the 1990s is no longer available. It has left our defence forces with funding for a peacetime environment. We are no longer in a peacetime environment. We are in a war environment and we need to recognise that through this refresh. It is therefore very timely that this opportunity has arisen, partly in response to what is happening on the other side of Europe.

A year ago, the Defence Secretary secured a record increase in the defence budget. The Minister was a Minister in the Ministry of Defence at the time and I am sure he made a powerful contribution. The £24 billion, as we have heard, is a very welcome addition to the budget. However, it is fast being eroded by inflation and it is not, as so often in defence budgets, leading to increases in capability in the here and now. Over a spending review period, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and I know all too well, these things tend to be backloaded. We cannot afford to backload and restore capability in five or 10 years’ time. We need it now. Our armed forces need the confidence to be able to go out and rebuild hollowed out capability.

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend is making a very good speech. As he will recall, we served together as Ministers in the MOD. I completely commend his call for a sense of urgency in these matters. He was a procurement Minister, so he knows how long it takes to build this stuff. We are running out of time, so I absolutely endorse the powerful point he has just made.

[Philip Dunne]

I am very grateful. I am well aware that my right hon. Friend, who, when we were in post was responsible for personnel primarily and then became armed forces Minister, has taken a particular interest in procurement of late. I have not always agreed with everything he has said, but I think we are absolutely as one on this issue.

What should we be looking at, in the refresh of the integrated review, to deliver the strategic shift that is needed in UK military capability? First, there must be an immediate restoration of the manpower that has been cut from the British Army. It is very clear that what is happening in Ukraine is a land conflict. Our Army’s land capability has suffered cuts for years, perhaps because it has been given lower priority in the allocation of funds for new capability. That is largely because it is easier to cut a small programme, either by deferring it for a bit or by cutting a bit out, than to cut a major programme, which takes years longer to achieve, as is typically the case in the air and maritime domains.

We also need to prioritise land capability from an equipment perspective, so the second thing that the refresh needs is to look at the capability and capital equipment that the British Army requires. The Chairman of the Select Committee listed a number of items that he would like to see restored or improved.

We need to learn clear lessons about what the current conflict is delivering from the state-on-state aggressor in the Ukraine. I do not have a military background and have not studied the doctrine as the Minister has, but it is very clear that taking territory on a modern battlefield requires the ability to manoeuvre at scale under armoured protection. It is vital that our infantry mobility and our power projection on land, at scale, be restored. As we have heard, much of our equipment is now decades old. Although some of it remains more effective and capable than what an adversary might have, we just do not have enough, and what we do have is getting pretty tired.

We also need to be able to clear territory in advance, so we need artillery capability and agile unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering force across a battlefield. Air protection is critical to that, so we need air defence and a variety of UAVs. Much of our UAV capability has been built around delivering precision fire remotely, which has been very effective in theatres in which we have been operating, such as Afghanistan or Iraq, but would be much harder to deliver at scale across a wider battlefront.

New capability and equipment cannot be effective unless we have manpower trained to use it, so the integrated review also needs to provide adequate funding to allow force-on-force armoured training at scale, access to training areas and the ability to experiment with novel groupings and battlegroups at scale. We are in danger of giving up the capability that we had; I am thinking in particular of the training ground in Canada.

To achieve this, we need agile procurement, as I called for in a paper in 2018. That approach has been provided through the urgent operational requirements system and by individual commands through the rapid capability offices that have been established, which are doing well at bringing in new capability, often procured off the shelf but typically at a small scale. What we are talking about today is on a different scale, so we need to consider acquiring some capability off the shelf. We do not have the luxury of a 10-year procurement programme that may slip, as has often been discussed in this Chamber. We have to contemplate that approach, even if it means not necessarily buying British all the time.

We can continue to provide Ukraine with equipment. We have taken a lead in Europe in providing equipment— I command the Government for their stance—and in training the brave Ukrainian soldiers in its use. However, the conflict is going on for longer than the aggressor intended and longer than any of us would like. We must assume that it will continue, and that supplies will be needed, for some time. In the integrated review, we must be prepared to backfill our own supplies of munitions and increase our own stockpiles and capability. That takes time, and it takes treasure. We need to establish strategic reserves as a consequence of the integrated review, which will allow us to sustain our own forces and those in Ukraine for a long time. We have to demonstrate to the Russians that the UK has the resolve to stand fast behind Ukraine, and the resolve to ensure that NATO is in a position to act as a deterrent to any extension of this conflict beyond where it currently is.

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[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for securing the debate. I rather feared, having I nipped out of the Chamber, that I had missed a well-aimed salvo from the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), but I am sure he will waste no opportunity to chuck another one when he gets the chance.

Putin’s world view needs to be understood in order to be effectively combated. It is not enough just to mock it or rubbish it in isolation, as is so often done in the west. Instead, we must systematically deconstruct it in an intelligent and strategic manner that reflects the scale of the risks that we face in misinterpreting it. Despite its consequences, this is of course nothing more than the classic “enemy abroad” tactic: when you cannot deliver for your people at home, you turn their gaze to a manufactured enemy abroad. That has been done many times.

Let me ally myself with what was said by the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) in defence of the Russian people as opposed to the Russian elite. Of course there are inputs into this malign war and offensive by the general population, but if we write off the people of Russia along with the elite, I do not know what we are hoping to achieve. The manifestation of Putin’s attempt to reshape his sphere of influence and indeed possibly reinstate an element of a greater Russian empire, or at least an extension of the bounds of the federation, must be rendered by us in the west as a last throw of the dice for Putin. Given that he launched this aggression on his terms, we must ensure that it is concluded on the terms of the international rules-based system.

Let me now highlight a couple of elements on the ground that justify the actions taken by the United Kingdom Government, together with allies in the west. Ukraine has achieved hard-fought but limited gains in different sectors, including a great deal of kinetic engagement with the Wagner Group. We have heard a fair amount today about what a deplorable organisation the Wagner Group is. The fact that many of its combatants have been released from prison demonstrates keenly the depth of the moral malaise in Russia when it comes to continued support for this campaign. The Kremlin has once again replaced its top commander in Ukraine. It believed that its “special operation” would be a victory in a matter of days, but here we are in month 11, with Gerasimov now in the hotseat—but for how long?

On Saturday, in the United Kingdom, it was leaked that the UK was going to supply a squadron of Challenger 2 tanks, and the Secretary of State confirmed it on Monday. That will facilitate a step change in capability for retaking territory with the combined use of tanks, heavy armour and infantry, but only in a very limited way, with one squadron of tanks. It must be accepted that the UK is seeking to open a door through which the other 14 European allies will step through with, say, a squadron each of Leopard 2s to add to the mix, providing 15 squadrons for the Ukrainians. We should be in no doubt that they would put them to outstanding use, as they have with everything else that has been donated to them.

Of course, the Russian operation deliberately violates international law. That is the point Putin is making: these are our rules, to which he has no intention of adhering. Russia’s action contravenes the United Nations Charter, the OSCE Helsinki Final Act, the Paris Charter and the Budapest accord, all by design. The illegal, unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine has shattered the post-war European order—also by design. The war in Ukraine should give us all pause for thought, in a range of ways.

[Mr Francois]

I could not resist the hon. Gentleman’s tempting offer earlier. We are great friends on the Defence Committee, as the whole House knows. He mentioned the Budapest accord. Why on earth, having seen what happened to the Ukrainians when they gave up their nuclear weapons, does the Scottish National party want us to give up ours?

[Dave Doogan]

Is that it? I thought it was going to be a hard one. As he and I agree, nuclear weapons are an appalling weapons system that we hope will never be used. They are a deeply troublesome weapons system, but they do exist. In so far as they do, I am not certain that the 150-odd warheads—sorry, weapons packages—that the United Kingdom will invest in will make much difference to the polar threat of nuclear armageddon that is presented by the 3,000 warheads that Russia has and the 5,000 warheads that the United States has. These are the polar dimensions. The United Kingdom spending billions and billions of pounds in the middle is not going to change anything.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Mark Francois Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 27th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right. It is very clear from the legal advice that one of the issues is that the EU will not change the text of the protocol even though, when the protocol was negotiated, it was very clear that it was not set in stone and should be subject to change because of the very unique situation in Northern Ireland.

We are very clear that there are elements of the protocol that are working and that we do want to maintain. We will maintain the conditions for north-south co-operation and trade, and uphold the common travel area. We will maintain the functioning of the single electricity market, which benefits both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The Bill provides specific powers to implement technical regulations as part of our solution, and today we launched a consultation with businesses to make sure that the way it is implemented works for the people of business in Northern Ireland. We will continue consulting with businesses and the EU over the coming weeks to make sure that the implementation works.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

One of the fundamental purposes of this long-awaited Bill is to uphold the critical Good Friday agreement, which as the whole House knows completely underpins the maintenance of peace and political stability in Northern Ireland. That being the case, for those who follow this matter closely, including in the United States, will the Foreign Secretary confirm that one of the strongest advocates for action on this has been Lord Trimble, the Nobel laureate, who helped negotiate the Good Friday agreement in the first place?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We all know how hard-won peace and political stability in Northern Ireland was, and we all know how important it is that the Belfast/Good Friday agreement is upheld and is not undermined. That is the discussion I have been having with colleagues in the United States and around the world, and those who have experienced the situation in Northern Ireland fully understand how important it is that we act and that we cannot allow this situation to drift.

I know there are those across the House who want to give negotiation more time. The problem we face is that we have already been negotiating for 18 months. We have a negotiating partner that is refusing to change the text of the protocol. Meanwhile, we have a worsening situation in Northern Ireland. So it is firmly the view of this Government that we need to act. We are pursuing this legislation as all other options have been exhausted.

Our first choice was and remains renegotiating the protocol text with the EU. This is in line with the evolution of other treaties, which happens all the time. For example, both the EU and the UK are currently renegotiating changes to the energy charter treaty. Given the unique nature of Northern Ireland and the unprecedented nature of these arrangements, it was always likely that flexibility would be needed. In fact, that flexibility was explicitly acknowledged in the protocol itself, but despite the fact that we have been pursuing these renegotiations we have not seen the flexibility needed from the EU.

As recently as this weekend, the EU said it will not renegotiate the text of the protocol, and Members across the House will have seen that the EU put forward proposals last year and again a fortnight ago; it is worth pointing out that those proposals will leave the people and businesses of Northern Ireland worse off than the current standstill arrangements. Its proposals would make the situation on the ground worse, adding further to the tensions and stresses; goods going solely to Northern Ireland would still face customs paperwork and sanitary and phytosanitary certificates.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lammy]

Yes, it needs to be improved, but the question is how. What is the best method to achieve that? Is breaking international law and placing ourselves in a situation in which our EU partners do not trust us the best way?

[Mr Francois]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Lammy]

Let me just make some progress, because I have been on my feet for a long time and lots of hon. Members want to contribute to the debate.

Our country’s reputation is a matter beyond party. It is hard won and easily lost. When this Bill was first mooted, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) asked

“what such a move would say about the United Kingdom and its willingness to abide by treaties that it has signed.”—[Official Report, 10 May 2022; Vol. 714, c. 38.]

The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) said in a thoughtful piece on this legislation last week that our country

“benefits greatly from our reputation for keeping our word and upholding the rule of law...We should be very wary indeed of damaging that standing.”

The right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) said,

“I don’t see how…any member of parliament can vote for a breach of international law.”

Lord Anderson and Lord Pannick, who are among the most distinguished lawyers in the country, have called this Bill a “clear breach” of international law that

“shows a lack of commitment to the rule of law and to a rules-based international order that damages the reputation of the UK.”

And Sir Jonathan Jones QC, formerly the most senior lawyer in Government, has described the legal justification for the Bill as “hopeless.” This is, of course, the same distinguished lawyer who resigned last time the Government proposed legislation in violation of their own treaty commitments. On that occasion, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had the temerity to tell the House the truth about the Government’s plan to break international law in a “limited and specific way.”

This Bill breaks the withdrawal agreement in a broad and extensive way while maintaining the pretence that it is somehow compliant. I am not sure what is worse—to be open about breaking the law or to dress up a treaty violation with this flimsy and transparent legal distortion.

[Mr Francois]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a thoughtful speech. Will he confirm to the House that he has actually read the Northern Ireland protocol? If he has read it, will he remind the House of what article 13.8 says about the ability to amend or even supersede the protocol entirely?

[Mr Lammy]

The right hon. Gentleman has, like me, been in this House for many years. This is too serious an issue for any shadow Minister or Minister not to have spent the whole weekend working hard on the Bill, as he knows. He also knows that we all come to this House hopeful of reaching agreement, but very conscious of the lawbreaking that is going forward, so of course I have read it.

Undermining international law runs counter to Britain’s interest, damages Britain’s moral authority and political credibility, and risks emboldening dictators and authoritarian states around the world. It serves the best interests of those who want to weaken the rule of law, and it is unbefitting of this great country.

This Bill not only contravenes international law but affords the Government extraordinary powers and denies proper respect to the role of this House. Fifteen of the 26 clauses confer powers on Ministers. The Hansard Society, not an organisation known for hyperbole, has called the powers given to Ministers “breathtaking.” Professor Catherine Barnard of Cambridge University has called these powers “eye wateringly broad.”

Ministers may use these powers whenever they feel it appropriate. Clause 22 allows them to amend Acts of Parliament, and clause 15 gifts them the power to disapply other parts of the protocol, potentially including the article on democratic consent in Northern Ireland. Ministers could use secondary legislation to change not just primary law but an international treaty. This is a power grab so broad it would make Henry VIII blush.

Clause 19 allows Ministers to implement a new deal with the European Union without primary legislation. Do Conservative Back Benchers really want to give any Foreign Secretary that power? This is brazen Executive overreach. It is an act of disrespect to Parliament and all MPs should reject it.

Northern Ireland Protocol

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The solution that we are putting forward will actually save costs by reducing the bureaucracy that traders currently face when shipping goods into Northern Ireland. So our overall proposal benefits traders into Northern Ireland and the people of Northern Ireland; it does not make the EU any worse off, and it helps to protect the single market.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the statement, as I am sure will the Nobel laureate Lord Trimble, who wrote in a national newspaper this morning that it was urgent to address the problems of the protocol. As an architect of it with John Hume nearly a quarter of a century ago, he also raised the issue of the adverse influence of the European Court of Justice in Northern Ireland. Can the Foreign Secretary assure the House that under her sixth heading, which I think she called governance, she will take action on that issue as well?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I can assure my right hon. Friend that we will take action to ensure that the arbitration mechanism is in place for Northern Ireland, as it is in the trade and co-operation agreement, rather than having the ECJ as the final arbiter, which it is at present. He is right to highlight the article today by Lord Trimble. We need to go back to the original thinking behind the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, which was about treating the communities of Northern Ireland with equal esteem to make sure that we have successful arrangements in place to protect peace and political stability. That has to be this Government’s priority.

Russia

Mark Francois Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

As I have said, the Defence Secretary visited Ukraine in the autumn. We are providing all the support we can to Ukraine in terms of both economic resilience and security—namely, helping with training troops, providing intelligence services, and providing support for its naval vessels. We continue to work to do that and I am co-ordinating very closely with the Defence Secretary.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I welcome the robust tone of the Foreign Secretary’s statement, and the evident absolute unanimity on both sides of the House, in support of the Ukrainian Government and their people. If something were to go horribly wrong in Ukraine, however, the next domino in the chain would be the Baltic states, with which we have an article 5 guarantee. When she meets other NATO Foreign Ministers tomorrow, can she absolutely assure those from the Baltic states that they have our complete support and that Estonia will never become a far-away country of which we know nothing?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I welcomed the Baltic states to the UK last autumn and I was very clear about the UK’s complete support for them and our complete commitment to our article 5 obligations. That is why we have the enhanced border presence, which I visited in Tapa in Estonia. Alongside the discussions that are taking place about Ukraine through the NATO Foreign Ministers, we are of course also talking about how we strengthen our defensive capability to support our members, including the Baltic states, which really are on the frontier of freedom.

Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Mark Francois Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). In 20 years, we have not agreed on very much, but I was born in his constituency in Crouch End.

I want to make two principal points about the integrated review. The first is about Ministry of Defence procurement, which has frankly become a basket case. The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have produced numerous reports in recent years outlining the chronic failures in the MOD’s procurement function. One recent NAO report highlighted that of the 32 major projects managed by Defence Equipment and Support, only five are running to schedule, and many, as well as being late, are also running considerably over budget. The latest NAO report on the equipment plan, published on 12 January, confirms yet again that the plan is unaffordable within the MOD’s budget, and that the affordability gap is widening.

One procurement after another is now in serious trouble. The Ajax recce vehicle, Astute submarines, the Crowsnest airborne early warning platform, the Challenger 2 upgrade, the Warrior capability sustainment programme —the list goes on and on, and yet nothing ever really changes. The procurement bureaucracy ploughs on regardless like a giant super-tanker, but one that is probably 40% over budget and five years late.

The increase of the defence budget by £4 billion a year over four years—a roughly 10% increase—is very welcome indeed. Nevertheless, unless we can seriously reform procurement, it will be the equivalent of simply handing large wodges of cash to a chronic alcoholic. About 40% of the entire defence budget is now spent on equipment, including support, yet DE&S at Abbey Wood is persistently incapable of managing its contractors properly and efficiently. If we cannot grasp that nettle once and for all in this review, the whole exercise will have been largely a complete waste of time.

Secondly, if because we cannot cut the Gordian knot of defence procurement, we look for savings elsewhere by slashing the Regular Army, that will only compound the error, as the deputy Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar), made so plain. There is really little point in Ministers promulgating the concept of global Britain and punching above our weight on the world stage if at the same time we are reducing our Regular Army to 72,000 and discarding some of the best line infantry battalions in the world as a result.

The new Biden Administration are already very worried about that, and from what I hear privately they have a perfect right to be. This is now a very live issue—75,000 versus 72,000. I understand that no final decisions have yet been taken, so I appeal to Ministers to draw back before it is too late and reject the 72,000 proposal while there is still time.

As Kipling famously reminded us:

“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ ‘Chuck him out, the brute!’

But it’s ‘Saviour of ’is country’ when the guns begin to shoot”.

Let us not destroy some of the finest line infantry in the world simply because we lack the moral courage to fundamentally reform the way we buy their kit.