Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Ben Wallace

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

First, just like in Canada, industrial complexes are facing post-covid skills challenges and indeed supply chain challenges—because our ships, just like everybody else’s ships, use international supply chains—and that has got involved in the timetable, which obviously has a knock-on effect on cost. However, where there have been supply chain problems, my team and I have personally made sure I have not only visited the manufacturer to grip the situation, but discussed it with the prime. It is incredibly important when we place these contracts, and the contracts are for billions of pounds, that the prime contractors, be they British or foreign, deliver in accordance with them. That is why, in future contracts, I have made sure not only that we do as much as we can to build in Britain, but that we get the primes to invest in the infrastructure of British yards and the skills base of British people to ensure this does not happen again.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

General Dynamics reports strong progress on the troubled Ajax programme, so can the Secretary of State confirm that a solution to the noise and vibration issues has now been found?

[Mr Wallace]

First, we expect General Dynamics to stick within the terms of its contract, and we will stick to our side of the contract. The user validation trials, which are the first steps in getting this Ajax programme back on track, have now been completed. We are looking at the results and hope to start the next phase soon, which is good news all round.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Ben Wallace

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I should be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss all opportunities to make use of that space.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

3. What recent estimate he has made of the cost of the Ajax programme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Ben Wallace

Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

  Can the Secretary of State say how many infantry battalions have less than 70% fully deployable soldiers?

[Mr Wallace]

I can write to the hon. Gentleman in detail if he would like. Does he mean deployable or does he mean trade trained strength, because there are a number of different measures? Most soldiers who are trade trained are deployable unless they are on a course. I can give him the exact percentages, but we measure them mainly in trade trained; whether they are trained, whether they are in depot or whether they are in their battalion doing active duty.

Integrated Review: Defence Command Paper

Debate between Nick Smith and Ben Wallace

Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

There is the first bid, from my hon. Friend’s constituency. My hon. Friend is a doughty fighter for his constituents. He has consistently asked me to ensure that upgrades to the Boxer and Challenger vehicles happen. I am delighted to say to him, first of all, that Boxer is coming, and I have asked for its delivery to be accelerated to ensure that the Army gets it. In addition, the Challenger will be upgraded, which is good news for his work and his constituency.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

I see that units of Government press officers have been on manoeuvres this past week, but unfortunately they have been spinning on cuts to our Army. The regular Army will have shrunk from 113,000 to 72,000 under Conservative Governments since 2010, so why does the Secretary of State not accept that reducing the size of our forces makes our country less agile and less secure?

[Mr Wallace]

I do not think it does. When the hon. Gentleman’s party was in government, it did not reverse the reductions from the time that I was in the Army. As I have said throughout this afternoon, the key is getting the balance of giving our soldiers and sailors the right protections they need, ensuring that our ambition does not overstretch them, and ensuring that they have the right training and investment in themselves so that they not only stay, but have a fulfilled career.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Ben Wallace

Monday 6th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

What steps his Department has taken to maintain the overall size of the armed forces as set out in the 2015 strategic defence and security review.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ben Wallace)]

Since 2015 we have introduced many measures to respond to a difficult armed forces recruitment and retention climate. These include financial incentives, flexible service, the recruitment partnership project, the future accommodation model, and improved childcare. We saw improved recruitment figures of 31% from 2018-19. The size of the armed forces should always be dictated by the threat, UK global ambition, and modern technology.

[Nick Smith]

The Army’s strength, though, is still woefully short of the Government’s target. Those wanting to join our Army were faced with Capita’s bureaucratic processes, which could take up to 52 months. So will the Secretary of State tell us what is the average length of time taken to get through the Army recruitment processes now?

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman makes some valid points. However, due to the extra effort we have put into the Army recruiting process, the Army has now in fact hit its recruitment target, and was on target to do so even before covid broke, to have depots full and to deliver an armed forces at the right strength, growing the armed forces, not shrinking them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Smith and Ben Wallace

Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

Absolutely. Building “failure to prevent” offences such as bribery and tax evasion into statute makes a real difference. It is important for us to give our law enforcement agencies powers to deal with, for instance, corporations that engage in conspiracies, because in the past that has been very hard to prove.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Poor pension transfer advice can amount to fraud, but in my experience local police officers often refer such cases to the Financial Conduct Authority, which often focuses on administrative penalties rather than criminal prosecutions. Will the Minister agree to meet me, and to review economic crimes against pensioners, so that justice can be done?

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. While large sectors are regulated under the FCA, we have seen fraudsters exploiting marketing as a guise to escape that regulation. When we identify them, there are criminal investigations, but I should be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman and hear more about his views.

Salisbury Incident

Debate between Nick Smith and Ben Wallace

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

I have spoken to my hon. Friend. He has not only considerable experience in this area, but some interesting and refreshing ideas that I have discussed with him and that I am happy to discuss further with him. He makes another point, which is that if we are to respond to any hybrid threat, whether that is from Russia or any other hostile state, we need to be as co-ordinated and nimble as the people doing the planning. One of the unfortunate characteristics of some of the hostile states is that they do not really have collective Cabinet responsibility. They are quite able just to decide that they will all do something and everyone is told to do it. At the very least, we must be more nimble and co-ordinated. Our work in that area is ongoing. What I can say to him is that because, over the decades, investment has gone into the intelligence services, our specialist police and, increasingly, the National Economic Crime Centre, we are in a position where we have effectively funded all the actors on the stage. They have the capability, but we now need to make sure that the direction of their work is improved. That is what we work at every single day. I will perhaps be able to say more about it to my hon. Friend at another time as the work is currently in progress.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Wallace]

I am sorry, but I really must press on.

[Nick Smith]

It is on that point about co-ordination.

[Mr Wallace]

We will get to that in a second.

I wish to express my gratitude to all the emergency services, and also to the staff at Salisbury District Hospital. It must have been very frightening for them suddenly to find on their wards a weapons-grade lethal nerve agent and, at the same time, the world’s press—not the local press, not the national press, but the world’s press—on their doorstep. They also had to put up with some rather odd behaviour by a Russian television crew who went down there probably to just cause trouble. Those hospital staff had to go to work and to live with not knowing whether they had come into contact with something. It must have been incredibly worrying. They have behaved brilliantly as has the leader of their hospital. I also want to place it on the record that the joint working with the DSTL, which was, by chance, down the road, really made a massive difference. I am sure that it gave confidence to the nurses, the doctors and the other staff at that hospital that they were in good hands and that answers would be reached.

[Nick Smith]

I want to pursue exactly that point. First, may I support the Minister’s remarks on dealing with this Russian state aggression that has brought this terrible nerve agent into our country? Will he tell us a bit more about the public health costs and the extra public health measures that may now need to be introduced to deal with this alarming development?

[Mr Wallace]

I was going to come to that, and we should also thank the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which basically took over the decontamination of the site when the crime scenes were released and worked continuously with Government scientists and international experts to ensure that we got it right. We will jointly fund the decontamination costs. Part of the support package for the local authority will include that, and obviously there will also be internal money going out, but the work is being funded.

Again, this goes back to the United Kingdom’s expertise and knowledge, but from about 2010 we already had in place something called the chemical, biological or radioactive response framework. It was an easy-use, off-the-shelf guide to what to do and where to get scientific advice—Members who have sat on the Science and Technology Committee will know that it held an inquiry about 18 months ago into whether that advice is shared correctly through local government—so the network and the structures were in place. Certainly I have never felt that DEFRA or the local authority wanted for support. There are lessons to be learned. I went down to visit DSTL and the laboratories last Monday. We have seen a nerve agent that we have not seen before—it is not something that I think any of us would have predicted 10 months ago would be on our streets—and that will feed into our ongoing work on decontamination and detection capability. We are confident that DSTL and our aerospace sector have some of the finest minds in detection, and we will continue to invest in ensuring that we keep that.

Following the incident in March, we took action against Russia with one of the toughest packages of measures that the UK has levied against another state in three decades. We have expelled 23 Russian diplomats who have been identified as undeclared Russian intelligence officers. In doing so, we have helped to degrade their capability in the UK for some years to come. Twenty-seven other countries, as well as NATO, joined us in collective solidarity and, in recognition of the shared threat that we face, expelled 153 intelligence officers, the largest collective expulsion ever. Mr Putin should be under no illusion: the solidarity shown that day by the international community in response to the actions of the GRU has not waned.

In the United Kingdom, we have introduced schedule 3 to the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, which had its Third Reading last night and has moved to the other House, to allow examining officers to stop, question, search and detain a person at UK ports and the border area in Northern Ireland to determine whether the person appears to be, or has been, engaged in hostile state activity. I was also pleased that Parliament passed the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, which was taken through earlier this year by the Foreign Office and gives us powers to sanction individuals or entities for a wide range of purposes, including those who fail to comply with, or are in breach of, international human rights law.