Strategic Defence and Security Review

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I thank the Minister. Recent activity in the south Atlantic has shown us that the threat from a Government playing to a national gallery has to be addressed.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman’s time is up.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have informed the office of the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) that I intend to raise this point of order. This morning at business questions, the hon. Gentleman told the House that Ken Livingstone intends to overturn the ban on drinking alcohol on public transport in London. That is simply untrue; Ken Livingstone will not overturn the ban on drinking alcohol on public transport. I wonder, Mr Deputy Speaker, whether you have had any indication whatsoever that the hon. Member for Harrow East intends to come to the Chamber to correct the record.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Lady for notice of her point of order, and for contacting the Member’s office. Right hon. and hon. Members are responsible for their own comments but should make every effort to ensure that they are accurate, and I am absolutely certain that the attentive Whip on the Treasury Bench will bring the point of order to the Member’s attention.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am reducing the time limit on speeches to seven minutes.

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[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I am grateful to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker. Like others, I declare my interest as a member of the Territorial Army. There seem to be enough of us here to form a small platoon, which would perhaps be interesting, although such a platoon would come only from this side of the Chamber. Indeed, there is a noticeable absence of support for today’s debate from the Opposition Benches—[Interruption]—other than from the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), who has just walked into the Chamber.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who, with his eloquent speech, raised the standard of this debate—we were getting into the weeds a little bit, talking about the tactics of the SDSR rather than the strategy. We were starting to talk about the individual bits of kit that we enjoy, like or are in love with—we are always quick to quote a retired general or admiral saying, “This is exactly what we need”—rather than stepping back and asking what the strategy is and where we fit in the bigger picture. Fundamentally, the SDSR is about how we protect our people, our allies, our economy and our infrastructure—indeed, our way of life—from the potential risks that we face. It is about how, on occasions working with our allies, we apply the instruments of power to influence and shape the global environment, and how potential tactical threats affect us.

The shadow Secretary of State did not want to get partisan when I intervened on him, but it is important to reflect on what happened over the last decade. Not only did the previous Government not have an SDSR, which was bad time management, but not having one affected our military’s ability to perform. During that decade we saw the September 11 attacks, we were involved in enormous campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we had the July 2005 bombings. The type of threat changed, compared with the cold war stance that we were used to. There were huge changes in operational tactics too, with the introduction of drone warfare, advances in missile systems and stealth technology—ways to introduce force multipliers that did not exist before. The conduct of war also changed, with an emphasis on stabilisation operations as much as war fighting, as illustrated in Iraq and Afghanistan. The kinetic phases of those campaigns were over very quickly, but the lack of an unconditional surrender meant that we then got into protracted stabilisation and peacekeeping operations.

I was saddened to visit Sandhurst not long ago and find that it had only just introduced courses in CIMIC—civil-military co-operation—which are required to enable the military to liaise and work with civilian counterparts, NGOs and the Department for International Development in those other operations, which start in the aftermath of the war fighting. That is what we now need to get good at; that is what was missing in Afghanistan and Iraq. Had the Labour Government held a defence review, those issues would have been identified. However, they did not, and we failed to take the opportunity to fundamentally modernise our armed forces. I think the Chilcot inquiry will reflect that. It will show that our armed forces found themselves in two campaigns with the wrong numbers and the wrong equipment, and without a clear strategy.

I firmly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border about our ability to work more cohesively with other Departments. We need to be able to work with DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to ensure that our strategy—the purpose of sending our military into danger—is absolutely crystal clear. It is clear from General Petraeus’s book on counter-insurgency that it is not enough simply to defeat the enemy; we now have to win over the hearts and minds of the locals—the friends that we are trying to support.

The triangle consisting of security at the top, then governance, followed by development and reconstruction has still not been developed. In Afghanistan, the security aspects took far too long to get right. Huge questions still arise as to why we ended up in Helmand province anyway. Those of us who know the history of that country will be aware of the treaty of Gandamak and the battle of Kandahar. Events such as those tell us that we are not particularly welcome in that patch of Afghanistan, given the history there. There might have been other places in which we could have been more strategically helpful. Lessons have been learned from those engagements and put into practice in Libya, where there has been a far more coherent effort, not only within our own Departments but in regard to whom we work with, including our NATO allies.

Labour missed a massive opportunity to understand what exactly our military are expected to do. Our armed forces were placed in danger and given kit that was out of date. I mentioned Snatch Land Rovers in an intervention. Too often at that time, other bits of kit were thrown at the military for testing, to see whether they would work. They included vehicles such as the Jackal, the Cougar, the Vector and the Ridgback. Eventually, the Mastiff came along and proved to be the most suitable for use in those operations. Things should not have had to work in that way, however. A security strategy could have helped in that context.

Procurement errors have been made. The Nimrod has been mentioned many times in the debate. The contract for its development was signed in 1996, and it was due for delivery in 2003, yet not one aircraft ever received a certificate of airworthiness. The Sea Harriers have been cut, which means that there is now no chance of us ever putting a carrier in. The existing Harriers do not have guns; they do not have the Mauser weapon systems. They cannot carry the Brimstone or the Storm Shadow, yet those missiles were critical to the success of the action in Libya.

We get stuck with certain favourite bits of kit. The Apache is now in a new dimension. It travels at two thirds the speed of the Harrier and fires the Hellfire missile, which is just as potent as any of our other weapons. We hear that the Falklands are under threat. We have an aircraft carrier there, so the base already exists, and it has the Typhoon and the Tornado. The Argentines spend only £3 billion on their defence budget, compared with our £30 billion. I believe that we should place the question of Argentina in a separate context in relation to the SDSR. It is a distraction from where we are going.

Finally, I should like to congratulate the Defence team on what it is doing. I think that we are finally progressing—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I remind Members that the wind-up by James Arbuthnot will start no later than five to 6.