Global Military Operations

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats fully support the apparent consensus in the House in relation to Ukraine and the restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty, but that is not what I would like to focus my remarks on today. I will focus on deterrence in two domains: the maritime domain and the land domain. In relation to the land domain, I want to talk about munitions stockpiles and the size of the Army, and to suggest that the Government are mistaken in boosting the number of warheads that we have in our nuclear stockpile while simultaneously permitting our conventional munitions stockpiles to run low.

The Liberal Democrats recognise that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has changed the security environment, so we support continuous at-sea deterrence. That is a dividing line between the Scottish National party and my party. While the strategic environment is as it is today, we need to see the maintenance of continuous at-sea deterrence, as we have for more than 50 years. However, we cannot support the increase in the stockpile of nuclear weapons that was first announced in the integrated review of 2021.

When the Liberal Democrats were in government, we achieved a commitment to reduce the nuclear stockpile by 65%, yet the 2021 integrated review announced that the cap on that stockpile would be raised and that information on the operational availability of warheads, deployed warheads and deployed missiles would no longer be made available. That is contributing to the atmosphere of secrecy, rather than transparency, in a very sensitive area. I have nothing but disdain for what Russia and Putin have done in relation to START—the strategic arms reduction treaty—but we need to set an example in this space through our transparency around nuclear.

On conventional munitions, £3 billion of the additional £5 billion of funding that was announced in March was for the nuclear enterprise, whereas less than £2 billion of the funding will go towards replenishing conventional stockpiles. That is the wrong priority, and it sends the wrong signal to industry. Industry wants a signal that there will be sustained production into the future, and it will ramp up production on that basis. The EU has already called for a million artillery rounds a year to be made available to Ukraine, and the UK could contribute to that effort.

I also want to talk about the size of the Army. This reiterates what other Members have said, but it is common in such debates for us all to pay tribute to the bravery of our armed forces personnel. Of course, that is entirely appropriate, but while the Government are cutting the size of the Army, we can be sure that British soldiers are not reciprocating those warm words. They will not be talking about the wisdom of their political representatives; they will be talking in terms that are far less complimentary.

We need only look at the online Army Rumour Service —essentially, the soldier’s answer to Hansard—to see that service personnel are not impressed by this Government’s plans to reduce the size of the Army. The Army was 103,000 strong in 2004, when I was training recruits as a platoon commander at Bassingbourn, which is now the Mission Ready training centre near Bedford. It currently stands at 76,000 full-time trained strength regulars, and we can anticipate a further cut of 3,000, making 73,000 by the end of 2024. The former Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, argued that the size of the Army should be in the order of 80,000, to ensure that the UK can deploy a full division of troops as part of a combined NATO force. We have to think about not only the physical component of fighting power, but the moral component—that is, the ability to get people to fight.

To summarise, I would like to know whether the Minister or, indeed, the Government plan to take the UK’s deployable nuclear weapons stockpile back to levels that we have seen previously, or that we saw announced before the integrated review in 2021, when the strategic environment allows. I would like to see how the UK’s conventional ammunition stocks can be knitted into wider European responses to the invasion of Ukraine in the way that NATO and EU members have responded, by upping production and giving a clear signal to industry that we plan to do that over the long term, and I would like to know when the Government will stop hiding behind the false choice between a sufficiently large Army and a properly equipped one.