Trident Alternatives Review

Debate between Nick Harvey and Bob Ainsworth

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I can agree to the extent that we must ensure that we build enough capability that we can mount the deterrent we will need at the point that we need it. What that will comprise is a matter for further debate and further study and I note with interest that even those on the Labour Front Bench and the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), acknowledge that it remains to be seen whether we need four or three to do that.

[Mr Ainsworth]

Just let me see whether I understand the hon. Gentleman’s position: is he saying that we should build enough submarines to be able to go back to continuous-at-sea deterrence and to maintain it at any point at which the threat increases?

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I am certainly saying that I think we should have the ability to go back to continuous-at-sea deterrence when we think we need it. I do not know that I would go so far as to say we should be capable of sustaining it indefinitely—I think that is unnecessary in scale—but I do think we should be capable of sustaining it for periods of time when there are heightened tensions. The problem we face is that we run the risk of having a Rolls-Royce nuclear deterrent at the expense of having an Austin Mini as the remainder of our defence capability. During the very decade when expenditure on the Trident replacement will be at its height, there will be a long list of other high-profile, highly important defence projects competing for what we all know will be very limited defence resources.

There are some obvious examples. We are going to put the joint strike fighter on to our two aircraft carriers, and we do not have the slightest idea at this stage what the unit cost of them will be on a through-life basis. We are going to build the Type 26 frigate. We have got to do something about the Army’s equipment programme given that the future rapid effect system programme is now in tatters as a result of the last few rounds of cuts we have had to make. We are going to need another generation of remotely piloted aircraft. We are going to need more amphibious shipping when HMS Ocean goes out of service in 2018. We need more helicopters. We need more ISTAR assets, and we need to deal with the cyber-threat, which the national security strategy said was one of the primary threats and in which we are investing modestly but nowhere near enough.

If anybody thinks that the resources committed to defence, or that can be anticipated as being available to defence, are enough to pay for all of those on the scale everybody in Government, and probably in the Opposition as well, would want to see and think is necessary in terms of our own strategic defence and security review, something is going to have to give. We cannot afford to do all that and have a nuclear deterrent scaled to deal with the menace of the cold war 25 years after the Berlin wall has come down and 19 years after we and the Russians de-targeted each other.

It simply is not the case that in order to get a deterrent effect from our military capability we have to patrol it all the time. That is absolute nonsense. The British, the French and the Americans have a posture of continuous-at-sea deterrence; the Russians and Chinese do not. The Indians and the Pakistanis take each other’s nuclear weapons perfectly seriously, but that does not mean they patrol with them the whole time. It is complete nonsense to say we have to do it on that basis.

I hope the report published yesterday will inform a national debate about this before a decision is taken in 2016, and when that is done the next generation of the nuclear deterrent will have to compete for funds alongside all the other platforms I have described, which are far more relevant to the threats we actually face.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Harvey and Bob Ainsworth

Monday 31st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

Why, when the Prime Minister said there would be no cuts in infantry capability while we were on a combat mission in Afghanistan, is the strength of the Royal Marines being cut?

[Nick Harvey]

There is a very small headcount reduction in the Royal Marines—the right hon. Gentleman is quite right. However, those units were not going to be deployed to Afghanistan and, in consequence, this will not undermine the effort in that country.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Nick Harvey and Bob Ainsworth

Thursday 4th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Nick Harvey)]

This has been an excellent debate—interesting and wide-ranging—which is no surprise, as the House contains many Members who are well informed, interested and passionate about defence and national security; while many Members’ constituents will be affected by the decisions in the strategic defence and security review.

The SDSR is underpinned by the new national security strategy, which presents a picture of Britain’s place in the world and a full assessment of the challenges we face and the opportunities available to us. It is the first-ever national security strategy that really decides priorities for action and feeds directly into decisions about resources. It was the force driver for the decisions we have made.

Let me echo the Secretary of State by reinforcing the idea of how difficult this has been, particularly in the Ministry of Defence. We have been acutely aware of the human impact of the decisions we are making—not only on jobs and livelihoods, but on the emotional attachment that people have to certain aspects of defence. Our decisions have had to be objective and unsentimental, and based on the military advice we have received. We simply have not had the luxury of self-indulgence or populism. The fiscal deficit is an issue of national security. Without regaining economic strength, we will be unable to sustain in the long term the capabilities required, including military capabilities, to keep our citizens safe and maintain our influence on the world stage. Every Department has had to make a contribution to deficit reduction, and the Ministry of Defence has been no exception.

We still have to live within our means as the deficit is addressed, which means also tackling the unfunded liability in the Defence budget. So the decisions we have had to make have been necessarily tough and finely balanced, and it means smaller armed forces as we make the transition to the future force structure set out for 2020 and beyond.

Before I turn to the specific issues raised in the debate today, let me say this: the decisions we have made are coherent and consistent and will provide us with the capabilities we require for the future. The campaign in Afghanistan has been protected; nothing has been done to compromise success there.

It was a pleasure to welcome the new shadow Defence Secretary to his Front-Bench role. I thought he made a very fair speech. He welcomed the five-yearly SDSRs for the future and he specifically acknowledged the up arrows on certain capabilities for the future, including in cyber-security. He referred, as did some other right hon. and hon. Members, to written parliamentary questions, showing that many of the details that will flow from the strategic defence and security review have yet to be worked out. I make no apology for that. It is essential that the House should understand the difference between a strategic review and a detailed plan. The SDSR has established a strategic aim-point and it is absolutely right to take more time working out, bit by bit, the details of what this will mean for each and every different aspect of defence.

We heard an excellent speech from the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames). He was quite right to say—I am grateful to him for doing so—that we have had to make cuts that we would not have wished to make. That, unfortunately, is the true scale not only of the financial backcloth to the SDSR, but of the legacy left by the last Government. He made some interesting points about reserves, calling for a fundamental reappraisal of the way in which we use them. He rightly pointed to the much wider use of reservists made in the United States. The US certainly uses them on a far greater scale, and as a consequence they are much cheaper than the regular forces there. One of the difficulties that we must tackle is that our current model for reservists makes them extraordinarily expensive. We will have to find a better and more effective way of using them in the future.

The hon. Gentleman was right to say that the SDSR was just the start of transformation. He mentioned the permanent secretary’s inaugural speech. I am sure that when she spoke of the next planning round, she was expecting it to be not the sole means by which reform would be pushed forward, but simply one among many. I also had a great deal of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the Ministry of Defence being centralised, and about problems with accountability and vested interests. I entirely agree with his view that we need a more purple approach.

The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), very fairly acknowledged the financial backcloth, and said that he thought the review amounted to a fair stab. However, I entirely disagree with his suggestion that the 2015 timeline for exit from Afghanistan was somehow party political, or had something to do with the dynamics of the coalition. It was an entirely sensible and rational end point to specify, in the light not of only President Obama’s stated plans but of President Karzai’s intention to achieve full transition of security powers by the next presidential election.

There are many different audiences when remarks of that kind are made. It is essential for public opinion in ISAF countries to understand, to some extent, the length of the engagement, for the armed forces to understand it, and for the people of Afghanistan to know how long those forces intend to be there. They do not want foreigners in their country for ever. If the political process that Members in all parts of the House want to see in Afghanistan, along with the military effort, is ever to gain any momentum or reach any conclusion, it is vital for President Karzai and others to understand some sort of time scale as well. It seems to me that to state, as the Prime Minister did, that by 2015 our troops would no longer be involved in a combat role on the ground was eminently sensible. It does not mean that all our troops will be out by then, or that there will not be an ongoing role for them; it simply means that the combat role will not continue beyond that point.

[Mr Ainsworth]

May I ask the Minister whether the Prime Minister consulted either him or the Defence Secretary before he made that statement? If those were the reasons, he would have done so.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Nick Harvey and Bob Ainsworth

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

The figure is certainly spread over the 10-year period of this review. The gap between the commitments that the Labour Government made and the budget that was in place to pay for it is £38 billion. Before the election, both Opposition parties charged the Government with doing just this. We did not know the scale of it, and it turns out to be even worse than we had charged. We therefore have no choice but to face the gravity of that legacy and set about the task of trying to build future defences that are coherent and effective, but doing so against that budget background. We hear that different Government Departments are being asked to indicate what it would entail to make reductions in their budgets of a different size. Let me explain to the House that if the defence budget were to be cut by 10% in real terms, the defence programme would have to be cut by 19% in real terms in order to achieve that. That is the meaning of the black hole that we were left by the previous Government, and that is the scale of the task that the current Government are facing.

The Chairman of the Defence Committee summed up the situation very well at the beginning of his speech when he talked about speed and the issues that have to be determined about how the process is taking place. Let me make this perfectly clear. As I have said in interviews this week, the time scale of the review is a great deal brisker than we would have chosen in an ideal world, but this is not an ideal world—it is a world in which we have been bequeathed the financial situation that I have described, and that needs tackling as a matter of urgency. We have to ensure that the decisions that we take in the next few weeks in the SDSR are sustainable not only over the short and medium term but over the long term, and they have to proceed in parallel with the Government’s spending review. The alternative would have been just to sit back and allow the Treasury to dictate a spending envelope in which a strategic defence review that we might have conducted at a more leisurely pace would be obliged to fit itself, whereas by doing the work at the same time as the comprehensive spending review, we are able to fight our corner within the spending round having done the work involved.

The right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) said that everybody involved in defence in the political community—he quoted my words from before the election—should kick up rough. My sense is that that is exactly what everybody is doing, and I am sure that he is happy to play his part in that process.

[Mr Ainsworth]

Everybody apart from the hon. Gentleman and the Secretary of State, perhaps.

The hon. Gentleman is aware that my predecessor as Secretary of State ordered the Gray report, that I published it, and that National Audit Office reports were published before that. He knew what the situation was. When did he or his Conservative now-friends call for cuts in defence to deal with it? When, prior to the election, did he ever do that? Did he ever do anything other than ask for more?

[Nick Harvey]

Every time there was a defence debate in this House in the two or three years before the election, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members repeatedly quizzed Ministers about the apparent gap between the promises they were making, the plans they were laying down and the funds that they appeared to have at their disposal in order to fulfil them. Time and again, they stood there pretending that it all added up, and the fact of the matter is that it did not.

The right hon. Gentleman refers to the Gray report. That very telling report specifically identified the true situation on the procurement side. However, that was only half the story, because the black hole existed not only in the procurement budget but across the whole defence budget, and that is the scale of the challenge that now faces us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Harvey]

I suppose I am mildly surprised not even to have seen the usual suspects. In fairness, we have heard from them before very many times on these matters, so I think we can rest assured that their perspective is understood. The right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) said, quoting me from before the election, that all parts of the political community interested in defence would need to get together to make our views clear to the Treasury—“kick up rough” was his expression.

[Mr Ainsworth]

It was yours.

[Nick Harvey]

It was my expression, which the right hon. Gentleman kindly elevated to make his point.

I say to all Members present that it is not at all unhelpful to Defence Ministers that we will be able to illustrate to the rest of Government the strength of feeling that has been expressed in this debate. I am grateful to all those who came to take part and put their point of view.

We are wrestling with very difficult issues. The financial background is that which I described earlier; I do not intend to repeat all that now. However, even if we were conducting a defence review at this time and there were no financial difficulties at all, we would still be making big and significant changes, and we cannot do that without some pain and collateral damage. It is not possible that everybody speaking from every part of the country and every part of the defence community will get what they want at the end of this process. We must acknowledge that and realise that if we are to reconfigure our forces to equip them for the challenges that we believe, in our best estimate, they are likely to face in the 21st century, then there will be change. Some capabilities will be less relevant in future than they have been in the past, and we will have to identify the new areas that will require additional investment to equip the forces in the way that we want them to be equipped.

Not all these decisions are self-evident. It is more than a decade—12 years—since the last formal review, and the world has changed immensely in that time. Furthermore, we have learned a lot from the operations that we have been involved in during that time. I very much agree with the right hon. Member for Coventry North East that the force density taking effect in Afghanistan now is having much more impact than we had on our initial entry into Helmand. The military have learned from these experiences, as have the Department and the NATO coalition. When we consider how we prepare force structures for the future, we have to learn those lessons. We cannot be exempt from the overall overhaul that we can see taking place across Whitehall. However, retaining effective defence will certainly be our priority, and we will not allow that to be undermined by the financial predicament in which we find ourselves.

Comments have been made about the speed of the review. As I said earlier, I have a great deal of sympathy with what the Defence Committee said in its report. It would not be from choice that anybody would conduct a review at this speed. I pay tribute to the previous Administration for the work they did last winter. The Green Paper process, with its cross-party nature and the involvement of an advisory panel that brought in a variety of interests, paved the ground for the work studies that took place prior to this stage of the review, which have in effect laid the agenda on the table and enabled the National Security Council to get to the point where it can decide the priorities and make the decisions.

Let me turn to some of today’s contributions. I should like to respond to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal), which was picked up by Opposition Front Benchers. I take the point. The right hon. Member for Coventry North East—in a very level and, in no sense disloyal, way—encouraged new Ministers to question quite vigorously the information that we receive from officials and the military, and the point is taken. I will personally ensure that we do go away and have another look at that case.

Similarly, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) raised the issue of rest and relaxation and the fact that it ought to begin from the moment people get back home. I entirely agree that that is the most desirable way of doing it, and if in particular circumstances it proves, for operational reasons, not to be possible, we have guaranteed that we will add it on at the end, when people get back. That is a sub-optimal solution, but it may on occasions be necessary, for operational reasons, to handle it that way, and we will ensure at any rate that people do not lose out. My hon. Friend made a good point.

I re-emphasise that we are still listening to representations from a wide variety of interests and will continue to do so until the end of next week. If any hon. Members, even after having had the opportunity in the House this afternoon, have further points that they or anybody with whom they are in touch wish to make, the end of next week is the deadline for doing so. We have, as I said earlier, had almost 7,000 representations, so although the process has been brisk, the opportunity for a diverse range of interests to feed in their thinking has been there, and many have taken it up. We will do our absolute utmost to process all that and arrive at the best possible conclusion, if we can, in the light of it.

I think it was with some sadness that the House heard the right hon. Gentleman say from the Dispatch Box that this was probably his last contribution in his current capacity.

[Mr Ainsworth]

Maybe.

[Nick Harvey]

Maybe, he says. I should like to echo the words of the Defence Committee Chairman and others in paying tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his work throughout his time in defence. He is very, very highly regarded inside the Ministry of Defence. He is remembered not only with affection, but with a great deal of respect, as somebody who was able to see the wood for the trees, take a decision quickly and get it right. He has earned a big reputation in that area, and it will go with him.

The right hon. Gentleman’s plea in mitigation that the gap between the programme and the budget—upon which I charged his party earlier—had shrunk during his tenure is possibly, just about, true, and to the extent that it is I commend him for it, but he served only to make the point that the mismatch between the programme and the budget had existed for a long time. Indeed, in all truth it dates right back to the strategic defence review of 1998, which set out boldly on quite a sensible and well regarded path, but it was underfunded from the first year and the gap continued to grow thereafter.

However, we wish the right hon. Gentleman well and thank him for the contribution that he made. He will be remembered by both the armed forces and the Ministry with a great deal of respect and admiration.

We will publish the SDSR later in the autumn, and I am encouraged by the fact that there is a degree of cross-party agreement on what we are trying to achieve. I hope that that will be sustained when it comes to understanding some of the tough decisions that we will inevitably have to make. The public and the armed forces will understand when we in this House seek to represent the interests of our constituents; what they will not understand or appreciate is if politics infects the response to the SDSR. We have to make incredibly important decisions and keep in mind at all times the shape and configuration of the forces that we think we will need in 10 years’ time, at the end of the period that the SDSR is considering; but we have to get ourselves from where we are today, in our financial situation today, to where we want to be then, and at the same time sustain in Afghanistan the operation that we are undertaking there. It is gaining momentum and genuinely advancing towards the objectives that we have set.

Nothing will be done to undermine the work of our forces on the front line, but those difficult decisions will, nevertheless, have to be made, and I am sure that we will return to them in this House in due course, when the decisions have been taken and the situation is understood for all to debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of the Strategic Defence and Security Review and future of the UK’s armed forces.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Harvey and Bob Ainsworth

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

In recent years, it has certainly been true that there have been concerns about the police not being as good as the army. However, I think that that situation is being rapidly addressed and that there is a tangible improvement in the training being given to the Afghan national police. The Helmand police training centre is based strongly on western models. There is a lot of western assistance in there, and most recent reports say that the quality of police recruits has improved tangibly on what it was like a couple years ago.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

Can the Minister for the Armed Forces help to clear up some of the recent confusion on Afghan policy? The Prime Minister seems to be saying, both in the House and elsewhere, that there is a deadline—that all our troops will be out of Afghanistan by the end of the Parliament, by 2014. The Defence Secretary and Foreign Secretary appear to be saying something slightly different. And we now have Lord Guthrie; I am so pleased to be able to quote Lord Guthrie. He warns us that

“The Army doesn’t want a government that dithers.”

I agree. Is there a deadline?

[Nick Harvey]

The key to our exit from Afghanistan is that we want to see the Afghans take control of their own security. They are not able to do that yet, but will be better able to do it as time goes on. As they progressively do that, our own troop numbers will come right down and our role will completely change. The process of handing provinces and districts to Afghan control will take place on the basis of an assessment of the facts on the ground. However, the Prime Minister has made it very clear that there will not be British troops in a combat role or in significant numbers in five years’ time. Of course, troops will still be there in a training role, as part of a wider diplomatic relationship like that which we have with other countries.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Nick Harvey and Bob Ainsworth

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Harvey]

There were many other thoughtful contributions—

[Mr Ainsworth]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Harvey]

No, I am in the last minute of the debate.

There were many other thoughtful contributions, and I particularly agreed with the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) that future battles will not all be like Afghanistan. When the Secretary of State says that there are legacies of the cold war that have to be laid to rest, that does not mean that we will focus entirely on Afghanistan and what Afghanistan entails. We must be prepared, as the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) said, for whatever the future might hold for us and whatever the case might be in three decades’ time. That will be the watchword of the defence review. As we look at all our capabilities across the board, we will try to be ready for any eventuality—