Defence Spending

Richard Drax Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

The first responsibility of any Government, as every Member of this House will agree, is the security of their citizens. In order to provide security for our citizens, we need to work in partnership with our allies. The reason for that is that none of us in NATO, with the possible exception of the United States, has armed forces that are strong enough on their own to deter all the external risks we face and, if necessary, defend our countries against them. Even the United States would not want to go it alone, because it is in a stronger position when deploying military assets jointly with allies than when doing so alone.

To illustrate that point, we need only look at our defence assets and capabilities and compare them with those of the alliance as a whole. We have 19 surface warships, as we heard from the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron)—my notes said 18, but I bow to his expertise—but the alliance as a whole has 283. We have 330 combat aircraft, but the alliance has 6,531. We have 227 main battle tanks, but the alliance has 13,730. We spend around $60 billion overall on defence, or £33 billion, compared with expenditure across the alliance of $924 billion. Now, £33 billion might sound like an awful lot of money, but it is very much less than we spend on social security, health or education. It makes perhaps one twentieth of all Government expenditure. It is also much less than this country spent in the not-too-distant past.

I was interested to hear what the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) said about the Prime Minister’s commitment on 2%. I asked him a similar question after his G7 statement last week, to which he replied:

“We are, of course, still meeting the 2% that NATO countries are meant to meet”.—[Official Report, 11 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 556.]

We need him to go further and make it clear to the House that he will not go below 2%. I agree with the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay that we need to spend rather more on defence than we do at the moment.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is dangerous to pursue targets—2% is the minimum target, I know—because surely our duty as a country is to have the armed forces we need to protect our people and dependants and to meet our responsibilities in the event that we have to go it alone? The Falklands war is a classic case. We could not retake the Falklands now, for example.

[Hugh Bayley]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, with which I agree, in relation to the Falklands. I certainly agree that one should not pluck a figure out of the air and say, “This is the target.” We need to look at the security risks we face and then at how we, perhaps on our own in certain circumstances but more usually in combination with allies, would deploy military force to counter those risks.

Are we spending enough? In the early 1990s, when I was first elected to this House, we spent considerably more on defence—4.2% on average between 1990 and 1994. It is perfectly possible for a Government, with all the pressures for public expenditure in a wide range of important and necessary fields, to spend more than we currently do if they believe that the security risks demand it. Of course, security risks constantly change. The question is whether we and our allies are spending enough, given the security environment that we now face. It is important to talk also about our NATO allies because, through article 5 of the Washington treaty, we have made a fundamental commitment: if we are attacked, they come to our defence, and if any of them are attacked, we come to their defence.

I am certain that defence spending should be on the agenda at the NATO summit in September. In the debate on the Queen’s Speech, I discussed Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its destabilisation of eastern Ukraine and President Putin’s threat to other countries in the neighbourhood with Russian-speaking minorities—the Baltic states and Poland—that he reserves the right to intervene if he in the Kremlin believes that the interests of those Russian speakers are under threat. The action in Ukraine follows the war between Russia and Georgia and, to my mind, tells us that a pattern of action is being established. A Russian foreign policy is being laid down that reserves to Russia the right to intervene and take territory from neighbouring sovereign states if Russia believes that it is in its interests so to do.

I believe that President Putin is testing us. He is biting off a bit of territory and seeing how we respond—whether he can go further or whether he needs to back-pedal a bit. As an alliance, we have to strengthen our position so that we deter further adventurous actions by Russia or anybody else.

It is 25 years since the fall of the Berlin wall. During that period, the west has put out the hand of friendship to Russia, helping it to modernise its economy, build stock exchanges and join the World Trade Organisation. As far as we have been able to, we have provided reassurance to Russia that we do not see it any longer as posing a military threat to us elsewhere in Europe. We have to reassess that now. We have to ask why President Putin feels that he can with impunity occupy the territory of neighbouring states. It is partly because his financial means are growing as a result of a petro-fuelled economy and partly because some European countries are not responding as robustly as they otherwise would, as they are too dependent on Russia for oil and gas. Europe as a whole, through the European Union, needs to address that by improving the diversity of our sources of energy.

President Putin may also feel that way because the United States has signalled that it is rebalancing its defence posture to pay more attention to the Pacific—it needs to, as there are real risks there, but the implication is less attention to Europe. There are also the defence cuts that so many alliance countries, including ours, have made since the banking crisis in the late noughties. Putin has also probably recognised a decline in public appetite or support for military action in many alliance countries.

Since 2008, Russia’s defence spending has increased by more than 10% each year—more than 50% over the five-year period. As we heard from the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay, China is significantly increasing its real-terms defence spending too. Over the same period, defence spending by NATO’s European allies has been cut by almost 10%. According to the UK MOD defence budget plans, the departmental expenditure limit has fallen from £34.2 billion in 2010-11 to £30.7 billion in 2015-16—a fall of 8.2%. I asked the Library to deliver figures about defence expenditure rather than budgets, and those figures show a rather greater reduction. According to the public expenditure statistical analysis, our defence spending has fallen in real terms, at 2012-13 prices, from £39.1 billion in 2009-10 to a projected £30.7 billion in 2015-16—a fall of just over 18%.

It is absolutely essential that defence spending is on the agenda for the NATO summit. It is also essential that the Government give a commitment before the summit not only that our spending is at 2% but that it will remain at 2%. As some Members have pointed out, far too many of our allies spend considerably less than 2%. We need to persuade them to spend more, but we are in a weak position to do so if we are cutting our own expenditure. We would be in a much stronger position if we said: “We have reassessed the risks we face. We in the UK will spend more, particularly as a growth dividend enables the Government to spend more, and we expect others in Europe to do the same.”

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[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) for securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for helping in that regard.

I pay my thanks to, and express my huge respect and admiration for, our armed forces, who continue, as they always have, to serve this country with courage and dignity.

There is one thing worse than weak armed forces, and that is a weak economy, because without a strong economy we cannot have strong armed forces. I realise that, and it would be foolish not to. I pay my respect to my hon. and gallant Friend the Minister, who I know does not like sitting here listening to Back Benchers, certainly those on the Government Benches, talking about our armed forces—no Ministers do, because they, like us, want to support our armed forces. I am sure that, in their hearts, they would like to spend more money on them.

Expenditure on our armed forces must surely be a matter of priority. The priority for us in this House is the defence of our country, our island, our dependants, our people and our many responsibilities around the world. I will raise the elephant in the room—or one of them—which is expenditure on overseas aid. I totally support help for the third world and everything that it implies. Unfortunately, by setting targets for those things we tie ourselves to perhaps unreasonable expectations, particularly when our own country is suffering economically.

[Sir Bob Russell]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with evidence given to the Defence Committee yesterday by a former distinguished military leader in this country who said that overseas aid assisted Britain’s defence commitments?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Drax]

Yes, I have heard that and I am sure there is an element of truth to it. I argue, however—I do not want to go too far down this road—that if a country cannot grow crops, for example, we should send them not billions of pounds but a farmer: we teach them how to do it. That is the way to help people help themselves. If we give them billions or millions of pounds, the money tends to disappear down a plughole or, worse, into some despot’s back pocket and a new fleet of Mercedes-Benz.

I wonder whether some politicians in the House—dare I say, perhaps the more modern politicians—really understand what our armed forces are about. I mean no disrespect to them, but they have not served. I do not say that because I and other Members of the House have served that we are any better, or even any better informed, but I believe we have an instinct—a gut feeling—that the armed forces in our country are the very backbone of the United Kingdom because of our history, and we ignore our history at our peril.

When I was serving in the 1980s we had the Falklands war. Many of my friends went down there and served with great distinction, as did they all. Expenditure then was more than 5% of GDP, and I understand we had more than 60 warships. Expenditure is now 2% of GDP, and we have 19 warships. I do not understand what has changed in the intervening years.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Technology.

[Richard Drax]

The shadow Minister says technology, and I agree that technology has changed. However, if we have one superb aircraft carrier and 10 Chinese submarines, and those submarines sink our superb aircraft carrier, we have nothing left. Technology is great, but it can be in only one place at one time, although it has a role to play.

Let me mention the list of responsibilities and wars that we have been involved in—I just literally scribbled them down. I asked what has changed, and my answer is “nothing”. The list contains Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Russia—as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), Russia is flexing its muscles, not least in the northern approaches with its submarine fleet and in the air—as well as piracy on the high seas and the Pacific. We as a country have other responsibilities. Northern Ireland has not gone away, and—God forbid it ever happens again—let us not forget that we had 35,000 troops at the height of the troubles. The list goes on: Malta, Gibraltar, Cyprus, the Falklands, Belize, and now Kenya and getting our citizens out of that country if it implodes. We also have NATO commitments, aid to the third world and disaster relief. Those are just some of the vast array of the United Kingdom’s responsibilities.

We are a tiny country with a small budget compared with many others, but we have had and still have huge responsibilities because we stand up—as we have always done—for freedom, democracy and the rule of law. To do that we need some muscle behind us in the event it all goes wrong. As sure as eggs are eggs and history is history it does go wrong, and the Falklands war is a classic case in point. As I have said, we would be pushed to retake those islands were they to be taken now, with no aircraft carrier and no air cover.

I also wish to touch on rumoured reports on the cuts and expenditure. A report of 15 June commissioned from within the British armed forces shows that UK spending will fall to 1.9% in 2017, and 1.6% in 2024-25. Will the Minister assure me that that is not the case?

My father and grandfather served in the Royal Navy with great distinction. My grandfather would be turning in his grave. My father is not in his—a long way from it, God bless him—but he is certainly not a happy man. As Admiral Lord West said, the state of our Royal Navy now is a national disgrace. Freedom comes at a price and we must be prepared to pay it.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—