Export Licensing: High Court Judgment
Debate between Mike Gapes and Liam Fox(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Fox
The judgment makes it very clear that that is the case. I think that those who criticise the UK system should look at how robust we are in comparison with other countries. It would do everybody in this country good to recognise how robust and clear we are in the decisions that we make and how transparent we are in our conduct.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State rightly draws attention to the robust nature of the wording in the document produced by the court. This judgment relates to a decision under the EU consolidated criteria. Does he agree that it will be extremely important that we continue to maintain controls of arms exports that are as least as strong in future as they are under the existing EU consolidated criteria?
Dr Fox
It is slightly worrying to me how often I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I find myself doing so again today. It is not what the criteria are called, but what they contain that matters. Their content has clearly stood the rigour of the Court’s scrutiny today. I completely agree with him that it would be wayward, to say the least, for any Government to consider criteria any less rigorous than those we have today.
Nuclear Deterrent
Debate between Mike Gapes and Liam Fox(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Fox
I cannot fault my hon. Friend’s logic. He understands the whole basis of the concept of deterrence. Of course, the deterrent is designed to protect the United Kingdom from the threat of nuclear blackmail, but we still have to work hard to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in other parts of the world as a complementary, not an alternative, policy.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State said in a small phrase in his statement that “if the time is right”, we could move away from nuclear weapons. Given the strategic arms agreement between the United States and Russia and the successful outcome of the non-proliferation review conference last year, neither of which he has mentioned, when does he think the time will be right to put British nuclear weapons into international disarmament multilateral negotiations?
Dr Fox
In making reductions that go further than necessary we are, as I have already said, not only within the letter of the NPT but well within the spirit of it. The reductions that we have made in going ahead with this programme show that we are committed to seeing lower levels of nuclear weapons worldwide. As long as the threat to the United Kingdom remains, it is prudent for us to maintain a minimum credible nuclear deterrent. How big that credible deterrent is will obviously be reviewed as a matter of policy, but as long as it is required and as long as this Government are in office we will retain it.
Strategic Defence and Security Review
Debate between Mike Gapes and Liam Fox(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Fox
There always had to be very good reasons for the coalition; my hon. Friend shows how collegiate we have become in the past few months.
I pay tribute, after a long and complex process, to Lord Stirrup and Sir Bill Jeffrey, the outgoing Chief of the Defence Staff and the permanent secretary at the MOD. I would like to thank them for all their hard work on behalf of the Department and the armed forces over many years.
The fiscal environment that we inherited from the previous Government has required us to make some very difficult and complex decisions in the SDSR. That should not come as a surprise to the Labour party. In his Green Paper, my predecessor, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), who is in his place today, wrote with characteristic understatement that defence faced
“challenging financial pressures…which will constrain Government resources.”
His Green Paper, a cross-party effort, said:
“We cannot proceed with all the activities and programmes we currently aspire to, while simultaneously supporting our current operations and investing in the new capabilities we need. We will need to make tough decisions”.
We have had 12 years without a fundamental rethink and we are in the midst of the biggest financial crisis in a generation, with an inherited defence budget that is in overdraft to the tune of some £38 billion and is tied up by a byzantine system of contractual obligations. There was a record in-year increase of £3.3 billion in the equipment programme during Labour’s last year in government alone. All that has come at a time when our armed forces are fighting at a high tempo in Afghanistan. It has fallen to this Government to take the tough decisions required without undermining serious capabilities, the military covenant or the UK industrial capacity.
If we had a clean sheet of paper without the financial pressures that face all Government Departments as a result of the inherited fiscal deficit, and if we were unencumbered by existing contractual obligations and in different operational circumstances, the results would undoubtedly have been different. Nevertheless, although difficult, the decisions that we have made are coherent and consistent, and will provide us with the capabilities that we require for the future.
We now know that, as the former Chief of the Defence Staff has said, Labour Ministers were offered advice on which cuts to make to get the defence budget back into balance, but that advice was rejected owing to the lack of political will in the run-up to the general election. Only the coalition Government have had the political courage to do what was financially and militarily right with defence. We have had to implement the cuts that Labour Ministers lacked the courage to make.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State said that if he had had a clean sheet of paper, he would have made different decisions. Does that mean that the agreement with the French that was signed this week would not have happened?
Dr Fox
Quite the reverse. In opposition, we spent considerable time discussing with the French what we would want to do in terms of greater co-operation were we to win the general election. What we saw this week were the fruits of considerable labour on both sides for a considerable time.
It is rational and reasonable simply to want greater co-operation with our biggest military ally in continental Europe. What has been amazing in the last few days is the level of agreement, which seems to have occurred across the political spectrum, that this is not a drastic threat to UK sovereignty, but a common-sense use of both our nations’ resources.