Defence

Debate between Mark Francois and Maria Eagle

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

May I begin by welcoming the debate? As the hon. Members for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) and for North Wiltshire (James Gray) said, we used to have more of these debates, but it is very good we have had one in Government time. While the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) said we are down to the usual suspects, it still has been a high-quality debate. There were excellent speeches from the Labour Benches by my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) and by my right hon. Friends the Members for Warley (John Spellar) and for North Durham (Mr Jones); from the Government Benches by the right hon. Members for Horsham (Sir Jeremy Quin), for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and for New Forest East, and the hon. Members for Harwich and North Essex, for North Wiltshire, for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti), for Bracknell (James Sunderland) and for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely); and from other Opposition parties by the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord). It has been an excellent debate.

The first duty of any Government is to keep the nation safe and protect our citizens. From deployments abroad and the response to the invasion of Ukraine to deployments at home during the covid-19 pandemic, our armed forces are essential to our national defence, our national resilience and meeting our NATO obligations. Labour is deeply proud of our armed forces personnel, veterans and their families, and of the contribution that they make to our country. Theirs is the ultimate public service, and their professionalism and bravery are rightly respected across the world. We thank them.

Labour is committed to strengthening our national defences and supporting our armed forces. Strong national defence is a secure foundation upon which Labour’s mission-driven Government will be built if we are fortunate enough to win the general election when it comes.

Labour’s commitment to NATO is unshakeable. We are the party of NATO and Labour’s values of democracy, freedom and peace are embedded in its founding treaty. Article 5 is the cornerstone of Labour’s commitment to Britain’s security. Labour’s support for nuclear deterrence is total. We will upgrade the UK’s deterrent and build the new submarines needed at Barrow. We believe that defence procurement can strengthen UK sovereignty, security and economic growth.

There has been much talk about the commitment to 2.5% of GDP, so I wish to make it clear that Labour is totally committed to 2.5%. In fact, the last time defence spending was at 2.5% was under a Labour Government in 2010. The current Conservative Government have cut defence spending. It has never been 2.5% in any of the past 14 years of Tory Government and we have seen the Army cut to its smallest size since Napoleon. My right hon. Friends the Members for Warley and for North Durham and my hon. Friend the Member for Halton made those points very well in their contributions.

Labour will always do what is needed to defend Britain and we will always spend what is necessary to deal with the threats that we face. That is why we are committed to getting back to 2.5% as soon as we can in a responsible way. We will set out a credible plan to do so if we win the general election. It is why we will hold a strategic defence and security review if we do get into government to look properly at the threats that we face and at what we are already spending. It is simply not credible to claim, as the Government do, that it can be done by firing 72,000 civil servants, as the Secretary of State set out. The last time that this Government promised to make their defence plans add up by firing MOD civil servants in 2015, the number of civil servants in the MOD increased, so it is hardly credible now to claim that that will do the job.

In his opening remarks, my right hon. Friend the shadow Defence Secretary said that people will judge the Government on what they do, not on what they say, and that is absolutely right. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham said that the Government’s promises were all smoke and mirrors and soundbites for the next general election, and it is hard to see them as anything else when they have been left so late in this Parliament to be announced.

The Institute for Government has said that the Government’s plan does not add up and is not credible. It says that cutting 70,000 civil service jobs will get nowhere near close to delivering the savings needed and that, even when using our research and development budgets as well, it will leave questions about how the rest will be paid for. The House welcomed the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford saying that the Defence Committee—the Chair of which is also in his place—will be scrutinising the £75 billion figure. I look forward to hearing what it has to say when it has done so.

The truth is that the Conservatives have failed on defence over the past 14 years. They have cut spending and they are still doing so. They have hollowed out our armed forces. Since 2010, the Conservatives have reduced our armed forces by more than 43,000 personnel, one in five ships has been removed from the Royal Navy, and more than 200 aircraft have been taken out of service in the past five years alone. They have cut the British Army to its smallest size since Napoleon, while the threats are increasing and NATO is boosting its high-readiness forces from 40,000 to 300,000. Ministers now plan to cut the Army further. Those are the facts.

Recruitment targets have been missed every year, so the Government have not even been able to recruit the numbers they want, and retention rates are dropping. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton referred in his remarks to the “outflow” and the state of reserve forces in respect of some research that he has been doing into the numbers. Therefore, the past 14 years have corroded the nation’s contract with those who serve, and we must do better. The Government have left personnel living in damp and mouldy housing and, perhaps not surprisingly, morale has fallen, as has retention. Is it any wonder, when we leave people living in the conditions that we have seen in some of our forces accommodation? Nearly half of all serving personnel live in the lowest grade single-living accommodation and more than 4,000 personnel live in accommodation so poor that the MOD is forced to reduce or scrap collecting rent altogether. Contractors hired by Ministers missed 21,000 maintenance appointments between April 2022 and February 2024.

The report of the independent Kerslake commission on armed forces housing entitled “Homes unfit for heroes” has called the state of forces housing

“a tax on the goodwill of service personnel and their families.”

During the cost of living crisis, the numbers of personnel and veterans on universal credit are rising, and some troops are even using food banks to get by.

In government, Labour will renew the country’s commitment to those who serve, set new standards for service accommodation and legislate for an armed forces commissioner to act as a strong independent champion for our forces and their families to improve service life. We will fully incorporate the armed forces covenant into law, fulfilling the moral contract that our society makes with those who serve. I noticed that the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), who speaks for the SNP, said that he wanted a representative body but was willing to support some of Labour’s proposed policies.

On procurement, the Conservatives have wasted over £15 billion of taxpayers’ money through mismanagement of defence procurement programmes, with over £5 billion wasted since 2019 alone. Forty-six of 52 major projects are not on time or not on budget. Ajax was supposed to be in service in 2017, and £4 billion has been spent so far, but there are no deployed vehicles and it will not be in service until the next decade. It is no wonder the Secretary of State is not listening and is too busy chatting—he does not want to hear about the failures of defence procurement on his watch, or the Government’s cost-saving cuts to E-7 Wedgetail, which are cutting the number of planes from five to three, with taxpayers footing 90% of the original cost to get only 60% of the planned capability.

[Mr Francois]

I am very critical of Wedgetail, but, just as a fact, on Ajax, the initial operating capability for the first vehicles is at the back end of 2025. That is next year, not in the next decade.

[Maria Eagle]

I accept that fact. If I said the next decade, that was not what I meant to say.

The Public Accounts Committee has described the defence procurement system as

“broken and repeatedly wasting…taxpayers’ money.”

My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley was right that we need an industrial base and that short-term cost cutting will not do. He said that we need to speed up procurement, especially of administration, when it comes to making these decisions.

The right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford said that we need a change of culture as well as reform in procurement, as did the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex, who set out his ideas about how best to change culture in organisations that can be quite resistant to change. I accept that that will be a difficult job, but I think there is acceptance across the House that it needs to be done.

At the moment, it is fair to say that the Government have been wasting taxpayers’ money hand over fist, and that is not just waste in procurement. Parliamentary answers show that the Department has lost £927 million to fraud since 2010, with £619 million of that since 2019—that would be enough to pay for 170 Challenger 3 tanks—yet the average length of time for Fraud Defence to conduct an investigation has increased from 519 days in 2019 to 742 days in 2023. Why? The Government seem to have stopped focusing on good administration.

A Labour Government will do better. Under a future Labour Government, we will drive deep defence procurement reform inside the MOD to reduce waste and ensure that our armed forces have the kit they need to defend Britain.

Labour is committed to strengthening our national defence and supporting our armed forces and their families. We will always do what is necessary to defend the country, and we will always spend what is necessary to deal with the threats that we face. Britain will be better defended under Labour.