Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Lancaster]

Having achieved initial operating capability from land in December 2018, and with the successful completion of its first operation, the Lightning programme is now focused on delivering initial operational capability for carrier strike, which is planned for December 2020.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Within four weeks of the Salisbury incident last year, Russia Today and Sputnik published 138 separate and contradictory narratives and 735 articles about the chemical weapons poisoning of the Skripals by Russian agents. There were dozens of different narratives on the rise of Novichok, its use, how it was not Russia’s fault and how Russia was the victim of a witch hunt. It is one of the examples that Russia is deploying in hybrid warfare. What plans does the Secretary of State have to announce the role of the cross-Government use of the Fusion doctrine? How able are the Government to expand the use of the 77 Brigade, if needed?

[Mark Lancaster]

I declare my interest as deputy commander of the 77 Brigade, which means this is a subject close to my heart. Hybrid threats present themselves in many domains, so we utilise a whole-of-Government approach to protecting the UK against such activity. The MOD works collaboratively with other Departments, in line with the Fusion doctrine, to support that approach.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

It is typical of the Labour party to want to hand over money continually to the European Union for nothing in return. When we look at the satellite technology, we see that it has been developed here in the UK with British money. We are more than capable of delivering the system with international allies. I hate to have to point it out to the hon. Gentleman, but there are more international allies around the globe than just the European Union, such as the United States, Japan, Australia, South Korea and many others we can work with.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

9. What recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the adequacy of funding for his Department.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

16. What recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the adequacy of funding for his Department.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Gavin Williamson)]

I hold regular discussions with the Chancellor. The additional £1.8 billion being invested in the defence budget reaffirms our commitment to protecting national security.

[Phil Wilson]

There is an additional £200 million for the Ministry of Defence this year, and £800 million the following year, but there is still a massive black hole to fill in the MOD budget. When will the Secretary of State stop asking for an inadequate bail-out and secure the finances that the MOD requires?

[Gavin Williamson]

Last year we saw £36 billion spent on defence, and next year we will see £39 billion, and we are investing £186 billion in defence procurement. We recognise that we have to look at how we make savings, which is why we have made £9.5 billion of efficiencies within our programme, to ensure that all three services get the equipment they need to safeguard the security of this nation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, and to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon, for the work that they are doing on an issue that I know is important to them. One of the key aims of the national shipbuilding strategy is that UK shipbuilders should be competitive in overseas markets as well as domestically, so that we can secure their long-term future. I hope that they will engage in all the competitions that exist.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Mr Gorbachev has said that the United States’ decision to withdraw from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty is a mistake. He has said:

"Under no circumstances should we tear up old disarmament agreements...Do they really not understand in Washington what this could lead to?”

I am not naive about Russia and the threat from Russia, but what is the future of existing international nuclear non-proliferation treaties, and what additional effect will that have on NATO’s budget?

[Stuart Andrew]

I apologise for missing the last part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, but we want to ensure that we are a full member of NATO.

[Phil Wilson]

What are the implications for its budget?

[Stuart Andrew]

We have made a commitment to spend 2% of GDP, and we have never spent less than 2%. We are doing everything we can to work with other partners and encourage them to do exactly the same.

Counter-Daesh Update

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the important role of the Royal Air Force in our continued campaign. The Defence College of Aeronautical Engineering at RAF Cosford is an important part of that, training not just British service personnel, but service personnel of many other nations. It has done an amazing job in supporting the RAF over its very long and distinguished history. I say a big thank you to everyone in the Royal Air Force, which has not been more active than it has been in its 100th year. It has flown constant operations over the past few years, making sure that Britain remains safe.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

The RAF has played a major role, and still does, in ensuring that something like 7 million civilians in Iraq and Syria are no longer under the shadow of Daesh, and we can be proud of the role it has played. We know how meticulous the RAF is in avoiding civilian casualties, and any allegation of civilian harm is, and should be, properly investigated, but how do we counter allegations by some organisations, such as Amnesty International, that there have actually been hundreds of civilians who have been killed by the RAF?

[Gavin Williamson]

We have always made it clear to this House that we investigate the issue of civilian casualties and that we do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties. We investigate it very closely and we have committed to reporting to this House immediately should it come to light that there has been a civilian casualty, which, of course, we did earlier this year.

I must say that I was deeply, deeply disappointed by the Amnesty International report, which was not only disappointing, but disgraceful. We have always been very open about the strikes that we have made. Amnesty International decided to issue this report. It contacted the Ministry of Defence, but, within 24 hours, without the ability for us to go back and explain, all its allegations were unfounded; RAF flights had not even been involved. It did not give us the opportunity to correct such a damaging and disgraceful report. We have written to Amnesty International and invited its representatives to the Ministry of Defence to discuss the matter. If it is going to produce reports, we want them to be accurate. We certainly do not want them to be calling into question the amazing professionalism of our Royal Air Force.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. While we have made such amazing progress, with over 1,600 operations flown by the RAF over Iraq and Syria, we should not think that Daesh, as territory is denied to them, are actually defeated, because they will disperse. The threat this country faces means that we will continue to have to fly operations above Iraq and Syria for a considerable time.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Our amphibious capability is important to our defence partners, so is the future of HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion secure?

[Gavin Williamson]

There has been an awful lot of speculation in the press about all of our capabilities. As part of the national security capability review, we have been asked to look at everything that we do, but I am not going to start any speculation about what the results will be. I have made it clear that I want to look at the evidence and the details, and we are not going to be rushed into any decisions.

UK Amphibious Capability

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) on securing this very timely debate. I want to make a few points and quote what other people have said about this issue to get it on the record again.

The point of amphibious capability is to land where the enemy is not. The idea that the Government think that we, as an island nation, should be cutting that capability seems absurd. Combined with the scrapping of HMS Ocean, it would severely impact our amphibious capability to enter a war zone by sea. Not just that; it would affect not only our warfighting but our humanitarian work. The first task of HMS Ocean back in the 1990s was a humanitarian task in the Caribbean when there was a hurricane in Honduras, and as we know it was deployed just a couple of months ago in the Caribbean once again. The amphibious capability has been used at least 10 times since the second world war. It was used in Korea, in Suez and then in the Falklands. As has been mentioned, in 1981 our amphibious capability was again under threat. Just think: if we did not have that capability in 1982 when the Argentinians invaded the Falklands on 2 April, where would we be now?

The decommissioning of HMS Ocean came after a £65 million refit in 2014. The Minister at the time, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), said:

“I am delighted that this contract will not only ensure that HMS Ocean remains a significant, highly-flexible and capable warship for years to come”.

Well, that did not last very long. With the bilateral partnership and accords that we have with other groups, such as the US, the cutting of perhaps 1,000 Royal Marines has led one US Marine Corps colonel to warn that it could impact on UK-US military ties. Bulwark and Albion, loaded with landing craft, provide command and control in a maritime environment. The colonel said, “That is what the UK will bring as a unique selling point to the party, alongside their world-class Royal Marines.”

Last week we had an evidence session with some retired generals and other force leaders. On the need for amphibiosity, General Sir Richard Barrons said:

“Are we really saying that we do not want the capability to put a force ashore over a beach—that we want to confine ourselves to ports? Are we really saying that we never want to be able to take British people out of a trouble spot except through a port? Are we really saying that we want to remove that capacity for humanitarian assistance? If we are saying that, we are ignoring how the world really operates. The second line of madness is the idea that if the Navy needs to adjust manpower and find more sailors, the obvious thing to do is to cull some of the finest infantry in the world—the Royal Marines. If the Navy needs more manpower, surely in defence there is a better way of finding it than culling your elite infantry, which in any case supplies people to our outstanding special forces. It is just folly.”

Finally, just two years after the SDSR, when we are having another review, it seems to me that the threats are developing quickly and unexpectedly. That is why, after two years, we are having another review. The Government will boast that the defence budget is increasing, but at the same time they still see the need to cut our capabilities. The more flexible we can be, the more versatile the defence postures we can take in a crisis. Are we ensuring that we will not be able to do that in the future? I believe that Britain is a force for good in the world. The Government need to be honest with themselves as well as with us. If they agree with me, the Government need to invest in our armed forces, because if they do not, and they continue to praise our world-class military, no one will believe that they mean it.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

I call Johnny Mercer.

Defence Expenditure

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

This debate is about what sort of country we see ourselves as being. I have always seen the UK as a force for good, and I mean that not just in military terms but in our humanitarian role in the world and how we have defended liberal democracy over the decades. The issue is not just the 2% pledge, but whether we have the capability to achieve what we set out to do as a military nation. In 2013, the UK’s GDP was £1.6 trillion, with a defence budget of £37 billion, or 2.3% of GDP. In 2014, our GDP was £1.7 trillion and the defence budget was 2.17% of GDP. At the same time as the budget has fallen significantly over that period, Russia’s defence budget went up by 21% last year alone. That is what we must consider.

I do not think the Russians want to enter into a war with the west, but times are uncertain. Russia might be a declining power, but insecure powers, like insecure people, may lash out, and that country also has nuclear weapons. I read in The Times at the beginning of this week that Russia has just unveiled a new sort of intercontinental ballistic missile. We know that it has put nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad, and we know what it does in Syria. We definitely know what it did in Ukraine. Russia is flexing its muscles, and we must be prepared for that.

General Sir Richard Shirreff said in his evidence to the Committee that even if all NATO’s member states put 2% of their GDP into the defence of the west, he was sceptical about whether that would be enough to see off the threat from countries such as Russia. We must realise that many of the military conflicts and issues around the world are asymmetrical, and there are all sorts of issues such as cyber and terrorism. Russia is one nation that we could find ourselves in conflict with.

China’s defence budget is well over $200 billion. The rest of that region’s defence budget put together is only $45 billion. A figure I came across at the beginning of the week is that there are more than 100,000 UN peacekeepers around the world in 16 locations, many of them in Africa. The world situation is very turbulent. Are we in a position to defend ourselves?

Sir Richard Barrons said in The Daily Telegraph on 17 September that the UK’s armed forces are withered. I do not want to talk down our armed forces and the brave men and women who serve in them, but this man knows what he is talking about, so he should be listened to. He referred in the Financial Times to Britain’s ability to defend itself from aerial attacks and said:

“UK air defence now consists of the”

working Type 45 destroyers,

“enough ground-based air defence to protect roughly Whitehall only, and RAF fast jets. Neither the UK homeland nor a deployed force—let alone both concurrently— could be protected from a concerted Russian air effort.”

These issues are worrying for me and, I believe, for the other people in this Chamber and the Defence Committee.

Is 2% enough? When other things, such as pensions and so on, are included, and there is creative accounting, do the Government really mean 2%? We must sit down and think whether it is enough. Efficiencies are brilliant and fantastic. We all agree with that, but the one thing we must do is to protect this country. We must have a serious look at whether 2% is what we should be paying.

We have two brilliant aircraft carriers that will come into service in a little while, but have we got enough ships to defend them? Have we got the submarines to defend them? Have we got the skills to man them? We need to look at that. If we are to punch above our weight, let us ensure that we can actually do that. We just have to be honest with ourselves. Is 2% enough? Is the 2% actually 2%? Should the figure be higher? We need to hear from the Minister on that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

As my hon. Friend knows, Russian military activity in Syria has supported the Assad regime, a regime that bombs, tortures and starves its own people. While we welcome the latest ceasefire from tonight, it is Russia that must make it work by stopping Assad attacking Syrian civilians and moderate opposition groups, and by helping to get humanitarian aid into Aleppo and other cities that have been starved of food.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

The G20 communiqué last week in China talked about terrorist financing. I know that we have done a lot in our military operations to try to degrade that, but will the Secretary of State say what more the UK can do to degrade the money that the terrorists are getting in from smuggling oil, from extortion and so on? What more can the UK military do to deny Daesh those sources of funding?

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

What difference would the renewal of Trident make to the defence supply chain?

[Mr Dunne]

As I have just indicated to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy), the Successor submarine programme will be the largest UK procurement of military capability for decades to come. That will filter through; I have referred to the 850 suppliers that we think will be participating, but the number may be greater than that. It will be an enormous programme that will last for many years and sustain thousands of jobs across the breadth of the country.

Trident Renewal

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing part of this debate, but I had duties to perform on the Serious Crime Bill this afternoon.

When I was 20 years old Mrs Thatcher had just been elected for the first time, and it was the height of the cold war. Like any idealistic 20-year-old, I wanted to live in a peaceful world free of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear annihilation. I did not think it was too much to ask. I was young and had the rest of my life ahead of me, so I joined CND.

CND wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons unilaterally —“just like that,” as if they could be magicked away. Although CND’s approach to nuclear disarmament was well-meaning, the organisation elevated unilateral nuclear disarmament from a tactic to a principle. CND implied at the time that “If you’re a unilateralist, you’re a peace lover. If you’re a multilateralist, you’re a warmonger.” I doubt very much that the British people are warmongers and they taught me a valuable lesson in 1983 when they let the Labour party know in no uncertain terms at the ballot box what they thought of our position on unilateral nuclear disarmament. Shortly after that, I left CND.

I relay that story because I believe those who are unilateralists hold strongly held convictions, but so do multilateralists. Both unilateralism and multilateralism are tactics—they are a means to an end—and are not principles. A world of peace and a world free of nuclear weapons and of the threat of nuclear annihilation are the principles and the goals we should be pursuing. To hold up unilateralism as anything more than a tactic and to try and portray it as a superior and moral principle is a lamentable fallacy and could turn, like this motion before us today, into something wholly disingenuous and hypocritical. For example, I do not understand how the SNP can promote unilateral nuclear disarmament and want to see the removal of nuclear bases from the Clyde, but want to stay part of NATO, which is a nuclear alliance. I now understand, however, that the SNP wants to remain part of NATO only if NATO takes all possible steps to bring about nuclear disarmament. I think we can all agree with that objective whether we are unilateralists or multilateralists, and we already know that nuclear stockpiles have been significantly reduced by NATO members through multilateral action. The SNP would have the deterrent move south of the border, because if there were, God forbid, a nuclear catastrophe, any nuclear fallout would stop drifting north once it reached Hadrian’s wall.

But what is the principle at stake? For the SNP it is a belief in a narrow-minded and short-sighted nationalism, where its contribution to a nuclear weapon-free world is the removal of such weapons from Scottish soil while leaving the deterrent itself intact because, after all, the SNP wants to be protected by NATO’s nuclear umbrella. That is what I mean about its being disingenuous. For the rest of us, the principle at stake is a secure world where prosperity is shared and people live as best they can together. For me that is a laudable ambition and it is one that the SNP will say it adheres to, but how do we achieve that ambition—by withdrawing from the world and making our country smaller, or by embracing the world with all its faults? Surely it is the latter approach that offers the best chance of success.

However, I believe that the supporters of the motion want to retreat from the world and renege on their responsibilities by giving up on the tools already at their disposal to do the job. What do I mean by this? The nationalist parties may seem bigger than they are because they are taking on more than what they are. In this case, they are taking on the rest of the United Kingdom, but their stated ambition of breaking up the United Kingdom will diminish not only Scotland but the opportunity to achieve what the SNP sees as the most important goal of all—a world free of nuclear weapons, which we all want to see. The irony is that the SNP and Plaid Cymru will never achieve any of this without remaining part of the UK. That is why the motion is disingenuous. The proposers of the motion know that; and if they do not, at least the Scottish people do.

The SNP’s stance will diminish what it wants to achieve. If the United Kingdom were no longer united, and if the SNP’s sister party, UKIP, had its way and we left Europe, the UK’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council would rightly be jeopardised. That would be a disaster because—I know this is not popular with the SNP and Plaid Cymru—Britain is a force for good in the world. I do not believe in a little England; I believe in a Great Britain. Britain is a force for good which should not be diminished by impotent nationalism which believes that the best way of solving the problems of the world is withdrawing from the world.

If the SNP has its way, it may see the removal of a nuclear deterrent from Scotland to another part of these islands that it shares with the rest of us, but it will further diminish the prospect of achieving its stated aim of a nuclear weapon-free world. Like nuclear fall-out, my aspirations for a world free of nuclear weapons do not end at Hadrian’s wall. Until agreement can be reached on further reductions in nuclear weapons, Britain should be at the table shaping the future, not succumbing to it. Let us not forget that it is not just England that is represented on the UN Security Council as a permanent member, but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Why the SNP wants to relegate Scotland from such a seat, I do not know.

If we do not take ourselves seriously, no one else will. In a globalised world the trick is not to be small and make ourselves even smaller, but to walk tall and be part of, not against, something greater than ourselves. As a consequence, Trident or its equivalent continually at-sea as a deterrent is the burden that we need to carry until multilateral disarmament opportunities arise. As I learned in the early 1980s, wishful thinking gets us nowhere.