UK Air and Missile Defences
Debate between Phil Brickell and John Cooper(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Phil Brickell
I agree with my hon. Friend; I will come on to that issue in the context of the recent Germany-UK defence agreement, which was signed in Trinity House only last month.
Over the weekend, there was also an intervention from former Defence Minister and former Chair of the Defence Committee Tobias Ellwood, who said that we are “woefully unprotected” and described London as “almost a sitting duck”. This issue can garner support from all sides of the House; I know that other Members will recognise the scale of the challenges ahead, which necessitate ever closer international relationships and collective defence within NATO and the European Union. With that in mind, I should say that I had the immense pleasure of talking to German counterparts as part of a delegation to Berlin in September. As the secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on Germany, I enthusiastically welcomed last month’s UK-Germany Trinity House agreement on defence.
The Government’s shared objective with Germany to sustain effective deterrence against would-be aggressors by building credible, resilient defence forces and defence industries is vital if we are to work towards the vision of a peaceful and stable Europe and north Atlantic. Sovereign capability, as an enduring necessity, is something that I expect the Government’s forthcoming strategic defence review will attest to. To ensure adequate manufacturing capacity, industry must remain at the very heart of our missile defence system.
MBDA employs 1,200 people in my constituency and almost 6,000 across the UK. I am sure that colleagues will agree with me and my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) that MBDA represents the very best in ingenuity, working as a trusted partner throughout Europe and providing the air defence capability that we and our allies need to stand up to Russia’s unwarranted aggression. I therefore welcome the Secretary of State’s comments at the Farnborough International Airshow earlier this year, when he committed to
“renewing important partnerships with industry and continuing to push technological boundaries”.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I thank the hon. Member for giving way; he has done so already.
Scotland is a tremendous asset in defence. Companies right across the country provide enormous pieces of equipment, such as the aircraft carriers built in Scotland. Scotland also has many small and medium-sized enterprises—we have Raytheon, which provides parts for Tomahawk, and Thales on the banks of the Clyde. However, does the Minister know that there is something of a hostile environment from the Scottish Government towards companies that need to ramp up and access finance to deliver the large orders coming from the Ministry of Defence? Senior Scottish Government figures have boasted about the fact that, under their watch, money would not be given to large companies for warfighting capabilities; it would be for civilian use only. That is alarming. We will need to ally with defence companies as well as NATO.
Phil Brickell
The hon. Member makes an important point about the importance of the defence sector across all four nations of the United Kingdom.
The Secretary of State also spoke at the Farnborough International Airshow about the importance of driving prosperity and creating skilled jobs across the country. But defence cannot be done on the cheap—we will have to put our hands in our pockets. It is an investment, not a cost, and I must urge the Government to reach the 2.5% of GDP defence spending target at the earliest opportunity so that the rogue states causing ongoing geopolitical instability know that their continued unlawful aggression will not and cannot win.
To conclude, the threats we face are very real, as are the resourcing, production capacity and resilience needs. I look forward to further measures from the new Government to show their resolve to stand up to Putin, invest in our defence capability and increase domestic manufacturing capacity.