Modernising Defence Programme

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

And very fine engines they are! We have had a continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent for almost 50 years. The work of our submariner force inevitably goes unnoticed—that is the aim—but what they do to protect our country is truly magnificent. Without their commitment and dedication, the country would be a lot less safe.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

This is the first chance I have had to welcome my former opposite number from the Whips Office to the Dispatch Box. May I ask him at what point Trident would become a burden on the defence budget, or indeed on the budget of the whole country? Surely, if it takes up a greater proportion of our defence spending, it will put pressure on conventional forces and put us in harm’s way, rather than keeping us safe.

[Gavin Williamson]

I dearly miss my former honourable counterpart and the work that we did together as Chief Whips. The continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is a vital part of our defence and we should never see it in isolation. People often talk about it without recognising that it is part of the whole spectrum of deterrence, involving the infantry, Royal Navy frigates and destroyers, Royal Air Force helicopters and fast jets and the British Army itself. The continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is an integral part of all that, and if we got rid of it, we would make Britain less safe. We have to have it. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman welcomed it, because it brings an awful lot of wealth, prosperity and jobs to Scotland. On this side of the House, we are very proud of that.

Defence

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Where they are based. That is why I said that the squaddies in Scotland will get a tax cut. What we can unite on—the right hon. Gentleman’s party; my party; and, I understand, some sympathetic members of the Government party—is that it is time to lift the public sector pay cap, which is affecting serving soldiers.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Is it not the case that the sergeant my hon. Friend mentions who will be paying a little more tax will be getting free prescriptions, while their children will go to university for free and their grandparents will get free social care, because that is the social contract that the Scottish Government have with the people of Scotland?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

They will benefit from many elements of the social contract. Of course, they already receive some of these benefits as members of the armed forces anyway.

I turn to the issue of housing. I was amazed to hear what the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) said. Actually, I should have singled him out because he gave a thoughtful speech. Military housing that I have seen is the kind of stuff that you would not put a dangerous dog into. It is one area where the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois)—who is not in his place, unfortunately—sees that the Government really need to put some work in.

On recruitment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West said, we need an urgent alternative to the Capita recruitment contract, which rakes in about £44 million per year over 10 years. It was the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford who suggested, in his marvellous report last year, that an alternative way needed to be found to fill the ranks. On terms and conditions, let us get our house in order. The right hon. Gentleman has now rejoined us.

I say to Labour Members, in the genuine hope that we can work together on this, that we should get an armed forces trade union Bill before the House. Let us give the armed forces the dignity and decency they deserve as workers in uniform so that they are in a better position to bargain for better terms and conditions for themselves and their families. I am very pleased not only that that was in the SNP manifesto, but that my party is currently undertaking some policy work—led by our armed forces and veterans spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West—on how we can improve the terms and conditions offered to the armed forces.

Trident: Test Firing

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Michael Fallon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State says that decisions on media publicity are taken on a case-by-case basis. Was the decision not to publicise this test taken before or after the test? Was any footage taken and were any journalists present in case a decision had been made to publicise it?

[Sir Michael Fallon]

The decision on what publicity to give to any particular test—these tests take place every four or five years—is taken by the Government of the day in the light of the circumstances of each test and the national security considerations applying at the time. Of course those matters influenced the decision taken last June.

Lariam

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I shall be as brief as I can.

I have a couple of brief reflections of my own and from a constituent. I took Lariam prophylactically when I worked as a teacher in Malawi, and I certainly experienced what I later realised were its various side effects, including vivid dreams and a certain amount of paranoia. It was difficult to tell, though, because I had moved to a new context and was working in a stressful environment. It was not until some time afterwards that I started to realise that those side effects were the result of the Lariam kicking in. The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) was absolutely right to ask at the outset how much more difficult it must be for troops and service personnel, who are put into extremely pressurised situations, to try to deal with the consequences and side effects of these medicines.

I have heard from several individuals who have taken Lariam as part of their service. My colleague Feargal Dalton, a councillor for part of my area who also happens to be the husband of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), was a serviceman who served on Trident submarines and elsewhere. He described similar side effects which, fortunately for him, did not last after he stopped taking it. The point he made was that the drugs were prescribed and had to be taken under orders. If someone was to stop taking them, even if they were having side effects and making the person ill, they could be subject to military discipline. Many service personnel were put in a very difficult situation.

I was contacted by a constituent who was given Lariam while he was in Kenya for six weeks in the mid-’90s. Twenty years later, he continues to suffer from severe headaches and migraines, which are attributed to side effects of the drug. He has been given no compensation. He has also been told that the side effects are actually the result of post-traumatic stress disorder, but he has not been given any compensation for that either. The problems he faces are making it difficult for him to access work and, when he does, to maintain steady work. He has been told that his condition is not severe enough for him to be admitted to a treatment centre, despite his having approached various different charities. I wrote to the Secretary of State for Defence on 21 September but have not yet had a reply. I hope this debate will help to speed up the process.

There is clearly consensus in this debate. Lord Dannatt, who was quoted earlier, said:

“It is extraordinary that the MoD continues with this policy given the mounting evidence as to the harmful effects of Lariam.”

The Government have a duty of care to those who, like my constituent, have served in the armed forces. I call on the Government to implement the recommendations in the report and to provide the support needed by my constituent and many like him.

Defence Expenditure

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Lewis]

It is significant, and it is indeed included on the chart. The only reason why I did not mention it is that, in comparison with the total spent on the other high-spending Departments, it is a relatively small proportion of our GDP. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right because, such has been the decline in defence, our commitment to spend 0.7% on international development now amounts to one third of the total that we spend on defence, which comes in just above the 2% minimum.

When we called the report “Shifting the goalposts?”, we put a question mark at the end because we did not wish to prejudge it. There are two ways in which the Government could be said to have shifted the goalposts: first, by including things they are not allowed to include—we absolved them of that—and, secondly, by including things that they are allowed to include but never included in the past, which would mean that we are not comparing like with like in terms of our previous methods of calculating UK defence expenditure. The Defence Committee inquiry found that the NATO minimum would not have been fulfilled if UK accounting practices had not been modified, albeit in ways that are permitted by the NATO guidelines.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that some of the money that is counted in the 0.7% official development assistance is also counted towards the 2%? I might take issue with some of his line of argument, but it sounds like he is arguing that that double counting should not be double counted.

[Dr Lewis]

We did not find a hard and fast case of double counting, but we noticed in the past that there are items of expenditure that are highly relevant to defence and security that could fairly and usefully be catered for by the international development funds. Given that the 0.7% is protected, and given that one sometimes hears stories of the Department for International Development struggling to find creative ways of spending the money it has to dispose of, there is an opportunity, particularly in relation to soft power, to use elements of the international development money for measures that add to our security.

Of course, this is a rather crude measure, because gross domestic product can vary. If this country’s gross domestic product goes down but we spend the same amount on defence, it might appear that we are doing more when we are doing nothing of the sort. Similarly, when the value of the pound changes, as has happened in the short term following the Brexit decision, we see the effect on what we are able to buy for the money we have available for defence when we purchase big-ticket items such as the P-8 maritime patrol aircraft from the Americans, although a considerable amount of that purchase will find its way to the British defence industry. What I am driving at is that perhaps we ought to be talking not about shifting the goalposts, but trying to move the benchmark.

We should be reminding people that, in the 1980s—the last time we faced a significant threat from the east in Europe in the second and closing phase of the cold war—we regularly spent between 4.5% and 5.1% of GDP on defence. The similarity lies not only in the international situation. In the 1980s, we simultaneously faced a very significant terrorist threat in the form of Irish republican terrorism. We now face a similar threat in the form of fundamentalist Islamist terrorism.

It therefore seems appropriate to note that and, in the week that we were told that the first of the successor submarines for the nuclear deterrent will be named HMS Dreadnought, to remember a previous HMS Dreadnought, the battleship that changed the whole nature of sea power as far as capital ships were concerned in the years approaching the first world war. A famous naval arms race was going on between this country and Germany and, around 1909, there was a great deal of controversy that the German navy was drawing level with the grand fleet of the British Royal Navy in terms of dreadnought battleships. A public campaign was mounted, encapsulated by the phrase of the Unionist politician George Wyndham:

“We want eight and we won’t wait!”

My view, which I believe is shared by at least some other members of the Defence Committee, is that a new benchmark is perhaps needed for the percentage of GPD to be spent on defence: “We want three to keep us free!” In reality, if we go on at the 2% level, we are in danger of finding ourselves incapable of meeting the threats that face us today and will continue to face us in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Bone. I will try to be as brief as possible because I also hope to catch the Chair’s eye in the next debate— I have half a speech to give because at first I thought there would be one debate.

Of all the Government’s commitments, we can point at and quantify two—2% of gross national income on defence and 0.7% on aid—and the others go up and down. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) appeared to imply that somehow that was a bad thing and that spending more on welfare than defence, showing compassion to the most vulnerable and needy in our society and providing that social security safety net of which we all ought to be so proud, was somehow at odds with finding the money we need to spend on the defence of the realm.

The right hon. Gentleman also spoke of investment, which I think is also quite important when considering the international aid budget. I would argue that spending money on international aid is an investment in our security and in our enlightened self-interest—helping to build a more stable and secure world by lifting people out of poverty and helping them get the food and education that they need.

It is particularly interesting that the 0.7% target, which admittedly was agreed some time ago, was based on a calculation of what was needed to meet the globally agreed goals for poverty eradication, including ending hunger, access to education and so on. I am not entirely clear where the 2% target came from. Is it a needs-based assessment of what NATO countries ought to be spending in order to effectively defend themselves or, as the report seems to say, a political target—an arbitrary amount? I think that has serious implications.

Even if we are meeting the 2% target, the key point I make is that there is a serious risk of conflation between those two targets. This might be a point of agreement: by definition, the double counting of money that is spent on aid and money that is spent on defence means the total amount of money being spent on each of those is less than it ought to be. That might be permitted under OECD rules, and sometimes there might be a good reason, but both the people who support the aid budget, like I do, and people who support the minimum defence spending target are effectively being short-changed by the Government’s practices in this regard.

There is also the question of what the 2% is actually spent on. I was in Westminster Hall not that long ago and was told that money could not be found for the Type 26 frigates, yet there seems to be a blank cheque for weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde. I have spent a lot of time in Westminster Hall this week discussing the Chagos islands and Libya, as has the Labour Front-Bench spokesperson, the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton). We heard a worrying amount of language that sounded an awful lot like old-style projection of power and a frankly old-style colonialist mind-set that belongs in the past. If the Government insist on setting these targets for defence spending and want to spend that, fine, but please spend it on what we need, such as modern counter-terrorism or conventional forces in places such as Fort George near Inverness, which is where I grew up. Do not conflate that spending with aid and do not waste it on weapons of mass destruction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Fallon)]

My immediate priorities remain success in our operations against Daesh and implementing our strategic defence and security review. Last week I hosted the first ever United Nations peacekeeping ministerial, the largest meeting of Defence Ministers in Britain since the Wales summit, where I underlined that the UK is stepping up its global commitments, backed by a rising defence budget and including additional troops to peacekeeping in South Sudan.

[Patrick Grady]

I am tempted just to ask the Secretary of State if he can name the French Foreign Minister and the South Korean Prime Minister, but can he confirm that, contrary to what he told the “Today” programme last week, it does in fact matter which budget conflict and security spending comes from, and if he is so strapped for cash perhaps he should be scrapping Trident rather than raiding the Department for International Development’s aid budget?

[Michael Fallon]

The French Defence Minister is Monsieur Jean-Yves Le Drian, whom I met last Thursday—I think it was the 21st time I have met him in two years—and the South Korean Prime Minister is Madam Park, whom I met during her most recent visit. The difficulty facing the shadow Defence Secretary is that none of my Defence Ministers know who he is.

However, on the budget, this is an increasing defence budget; we are committed to meeting the 2% target and the defence budget will also rise in real terms for every year of this Parliament.

Counter-Daesh Quarterly Update

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

The hon. Gentleman is right: what is happening in Aleppo is nothing short of a tragedy. It is a beautiful and tolerant city—I have visited it myself in the past—which contains all kinds of groups from different faiths living and working happily alongside each other. It is important that all those groups are represented in the drive for a political settlement, and that is our aim.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I join other Members in condemning the attacks and raids on aid convoys. What support or protection can the UK provide for such convoys?

[Michael Fallon]

That is very difficult given the complexity of the situation in Syria, where multiple strikes are being carried out by the regime against its opponents and where we need to keep up the pressure on the infrastructure that supports Daesh. However, these attacks could stop: it is within the gift of the regime to stop them. It within the gift of the Russians to bring their influence to bear, and I still hope that they will do so.

Yemen: Cluster Munitions

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dunne]

I would gently remind the hon. Gentleman that we are not members of this coalition. We do not have locus in Yemen to undertake direct investigations ourselves. What we are talking about are alleged violations of international humanitarian law. The correct procedure when an incident has been brought to the attention of members of the coalition is for them to undertake the investigation itself. We are able to encourage and stimulate them to undertake that investigation, because there is a long-standing relationship between our respective armed forces. That is what we are doing, and that is the right way to proceed.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

If these reports are not enough, under what circumstances would the Government actually suspend sales of arms to Saudi Arabia?

[Mr Dunne]

This is an allegation. There are a number of allegations of potential violations of international humanitarian law. If investigations lead to clear evidence, that evidence will have to be taken into account whenever an arms export licence is presented and where that information is relevant.

Oral Answers to Questions

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend raises a good point: the money we are having to spend on dealing with malicious allegations against our armed forces would be better spent on equipment and training for them. I can assure him that commercial legal spending in the Department is down a third on last year’s. I think he was making reference to the amount spent on Iraqi historic allegations, and we are doing what we can to ensure that this works more effectively and efficiently. I have had some good conversations with the Attorney General’s office about this and he will be visiting the team shortly.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

T4. Given the increasing double-counting of defence expenditure towards both the official development assistance and the NATO targets, through mechanisms such as the conflict, security and stability fund, what discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Chancellor about the redefinition of ODA at the OECD level?

[Michael Fallon]

It is for the OECD to classify overseas development aid spending, and it is for NATO to classify what is acceptable as defence spending, which it will do after each member state submits its return.

Trident

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock]

You see, Madam Deputy Speaker, SNP Members do not like people holding them to account for their terrible failure. I was just explaining the disgraceful mess that they are making of schools in Scotland, where the poorest children are being left behind—

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

rose—

[John Woodcock]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I am not giving way. I would have been happy to take an intervention from every single one of you robots—you are getting your instruction—but the proposer of the motion refused point blank to take my intervention, so I am not taking any from a single one of you.