Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Friday 23rd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why clause 1 of my Bill states that the figure should be at least 2%. It is therefore a base, not a ceiling.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend for promoting this Bill. I am sure he will agree that the Minister is a good man. Does he share my hope that the Minister will not insult our intelligence by saying that the Government will not support the Bill and that it is unnecessary because we are already hitting the 2% target, given that we were already hitting the 0.7% target for overseas aid when the Government supported enshrining that into law?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend has the capacity for perspicacity and anticipates a point I shall make shortly. I agree with him entirely. My Bill seeks to follow, almost slavishly, the principle set by the 2015 Act. I did that intentionally, to encourage the Government to give this Bill, promoted by a Conservative, the same strength of support they gave to a Liberal Democrat Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I could not agree more. There is an argument that we should combine all such budgets. I am not in favour of that, because it might turn out to be an excuse for reducing our defence budget. I am not opposed to overseas aid, which has a role to play. We are talking about priorities or quantum. In trying to establish our priorities, I am pointing out that soft power— overseas aid is a massive implement of soft power—has limited value in terms of the threats we face around the world.

[Philip Davies]

Is it therefore the case that the Government could claim to be spending one amount of money to hit both the 0.7% target on aid and the 2% target on defence, in effect double counting the same money?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

That is entirely possible, but I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not be guilty of such double counting, for he is our right hon. Friend.

Some have said that my Bill has been rendered redundant because the Chancellor guaranteed in July that the Government would commit to the 2% target until 2020. Given my party’s reticence to make such a pledge during the general election campaign, I was naturally delighted by that somewhat surprising announcement. However, it soon became clear that to meet the 2% target, the Government had to engage in a certain amount of creative accounting by including several items in our NATO return for 2015 that had hitherto not been included in the defence budget.

Looking at the specific financial detail of our current defence expenditure is complex, as NATO does not have a clear set of parameters on what constitutes defence spending, unlike the OECD in its monitoring of aid spending. Furthermore, NATO’s definition of spending and the Government’s definition differ, in as much as NATO publishes its figures retrospectively and is thus able to include costs from military operations, whereas the British Government’s defence expenditure document is forward-looking and is unable to account for unforeseen operational requirements. The NATO figure is therefore higher than the Government’s. To simplify the debate, I am using the Government’s calculation of our defence expenditure.

The House of Commons Library, to which I pay tribute for the fantastic job that it does in serving us entirely impartially and incredibly professionally, advised me a few days ago that, according to figures published by NATO on 22 June, the United Kingdom is projected to spend just over £39 billion on defence in 2015-16. That is reckoned to be 2.08% of GDP.

However, when reporting to NATO, the United Kingdom included several items of expenditure that had not been included in previous years: provision for war pensions of about £820 million; assessed contributions to UK peacekeeping missions of £400 million; pensions for retired civilian MOD personnel, possibly amounting to £200 million; and much of the MOD’s income of about £1.4 billion, including £164 million received as a result of the sale of the Defence Support Group to Babcock, for which the Minister was entirely responsible and on which I congratulate him.

Although it is perfectly legitimate under NATO’s rules to include those items, their inclusion serves only one purpose: to assert that we are meeting the NATO target, albeit by the skin of our teeth. It adds no new money to meet the essential demands of defence. I understand that the Minister will tell us that the income of £1.4 billion is new money, and I am happy to accept that, but that still means that of the £39 billion, another £1.4 billion has been transferred in from other budgets. If that sum were stripped out, we would clearly fall below 2%.

In an excellent briefing paper from the Royal United Services Institute, Professor Malcolm Chalmers explains that if we had used the same parameters as in previous years, we would be on course to spend £36.82 billion on defence in the current year, including £500 million on operations. That amounts to 1.97% of GDP, meaning that we would have fallen below the NATO target for the first time. Thus, it is only by introducing the new accounting rules that we have pushed our defence expenditure over the 2% target.

Although NATO has accepted the changes, it is likely that further such changes will need to be made if the Government are to meet the 2% target for the next five years. As Professor Chalmers observes:

“While the MoD budget is set to grow by 0.5 per cent per annum over the next five years, national income (GDP) is projected to grow by an average of 2.4 per cent per annum over the same period. If these assumptions are correct, UK NATO-countable spending would fall from 2.08 per cent of GDP in 2015/16 to 1.85 per cent of GDP in 2020/21, assuming the recently introduced counting methods are still used. A further £2.7 billion per annum would be needed in 2019/20, and a further £3.5 billion in 2020/21, in order to bring NATO-countable defence spending up to 2.00 per cent of GDP.”

The Budget statement explained that the gap would be filled by including the single intelligence account, which is set to total £2.2 billion by 2020-21. That will close the gap until 2018-19. The further allocation of the £1.5 billion joint security fund by 2020-21 could be sufficient to cover the shortfall by the end of this Parliament, provided that NATO accepts all those additional accounts as being eligible.

Although funds such as the single intelligence account are committed to Britain’s security, the SIA will not equip conventional ground troops or build ships, and it is still unclear what will be included in the joint security fund and how it will be apportioned. I understand that the idea is that it will be up to the MOD, DFID, the agencies and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to bid for the funds, so there is no guarantee that they will plug the gap in the apparent shortfall later in the decade, as predicted by Professor Chalmers, unless the MOD gets the lion’s share.

I acknowledge that NATO has allowed the inclusion of the SIA budget in our annual defence return, and that according to 2013 figures it is estimated that more than 90% of US intelligence programme spending is reported to Congress through the Department of Defence budget. It can justifiably be argued that if our main ally, and the main contributor to defence spending in the alliance, includes secret intelligence funding in its budget, we should be entitled to do the same. Nevertheless, the point remains that the Government are introducing into the defence budget funds that were previously allocated elsewhere.

I know the Government believe that they have met their obligation, but I am concerned by how it has been done. It is hard to see how we are not making ourselves more vulnerable by bringing in other budgets to shore up our 2% commitment rather than spending the money on manpower, equipment and combat readiness, which the increase in our projected GDP would demand by the end of the decade if we were to maintain the 2% spending.

As a direct result of that major shift in the accounting arrangements, I have included in my Bill a clause that is not to be found in the 2015 Act. Clause 4 provides that the Secretary of State be required to

“make arrangements for the independent evaluation of the extent to which United Kingdom defence expenditure meets the criteria established by NATO for determining whether expenditure qualifies as defence expenditure.”

The intention is to hold the Secretary of State to account for what is included in our NATO return and not allow extraneous funds to be included in our defence expenditure.

Before I leave the issue of accounting, I acknowledge that the Chancellor has committed to a 0.5% real-terms increase in defence spending during this Parliament. Although of course I welcome that commitment, I am not sure whether it is a departure from earlier policy. As I recall, when my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset was Secretary of State, he secured an undertaking from the Prime Minister that in recognition of our taking a pretty substantial hit, the MOD would receive a 1% per annum real-terms increase in the equipment budget from next year. As equipment accounts for about half of the total MOD budget, is it not the case that the 0.5% is no more than the fulfilling of that undertaking given by the Prime Minister in 2010? I know not the answer and would welcome the Minister’s response.