National Security Capability Review

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. I know that the first thing at the forefront of the minds of the Chancellor and the Prime Minister is making sure we get the right outcome. Everyone is very keen to listen and to look at how to get the right solutions for this country’s needs. I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his contribution.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

The Liaison Committee was unanimous in supporting the request of the Chair of the Defence Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), to have the National Security Adviser appear in front of the Committee. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will know that there are precedents for the National Security Adviser appearing in front of the Defence Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and elsewhere, and Parliament has never accepted the Osmotherly rules, so will he give permission for the National Security Adviser to appear?

[Gavin Williamson]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend is asking me something I cannot deliver. I can offer the Chief of the Defence Staff if she would like him, but I cannot offer the National Security Adviser. However, I will certainly pass on her request to Mr Sedwill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

It puts paid to the idea that anyone can forecast a budget two decades out and get it down with pinpoint certainty, which is something I know the Scottish Government might also find difficult.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr. Spearker.

[Mr Speaker]

Exceptionally, I will take this point of order now. It is germane and should be heard by occupants of the Treasury Bench.

[Dr Wollaston]

It is now more than four months since the general election, but still the Liaison Committee cannot meet formally to carry out its functions on behalf of the House. Will you assist us, Mr Speaker, because I am afraid that repeated representations from across the House by Select Committee Chairs are not yet making a difference in ensuring that all Select Committees are properly constituted?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. It is absurd and indefensible that more than four months after the state opening of Parliament, that Committee, which, of course, consists of the Chairs of the Select Committees, has yet to be constituted. I might add—almost in parentheses, because I am sure that the hon. Lady will feel empathy with other colleagues on this front—that the same situation, I think, applies to the European Scrutiny Committee, and also to another Committee which is not a Select Committee but which is a Committee of Parliament, and a very important Committee at that, namely the Intelligence and Security Committee. Those Committees are there to scrutinise the Executive branch.

I discussed this important matter in a most co-operative exchange with the Leader of the House at the start of the summer recess, and I know that she used her best endeavours, with others, to ensure the constitution of many of the Select Committees some little while ago. However, the fact that the remaining Committees are as yet unconstituted is simply not acceptable.

It would obviously be most unfortunate if it were necessary for Members to keep raising points of order day after day after day after day before those Committees were established, and, as I am sure the whole House would want to avoid such an embarrassing fate, I can only assume that proper action will now follow. However, the hon. Lady is always attentive to her responsibilities, and I am certain that, in the grisly event that it is necessary for her to raise a further point of order, she will not hesitate to do so.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

We have heard this afternoon from both a wife and a mother, so I am happy to complete the set as the daughter of an Air Force officer. I grew up for most of my childhood on Air Force bases, so I fully understand the value of our armed forces.

Last month, I visited the cold war nuclear bunker at Bolt Head in my constituency. I hope that it can be saved from dereliction and opened as a museum, because it is a chilling reminder of how close we came to Armageddon. That did not happen largely because both sides understood the rules of the game, but does anybody seriously believe that stateless terrorist groups or rogue regimes understand those rules or even care about the consequences?

Many of my constituents cannot understand why our strategic nuclear weapon is being left out of the strategic defence and security review, because the uncontrolled proliferation of nuclear weapons is one of the greatest threats to our existence. That voice has not been heard this afternoon. I hope that hon. Members will bear with me, because it needs to be heard.

At the heart of the 1968 non-proliferation treaty was a commitment to the goal of disarmament by recognised nuclear weapons states; it was the cornerstone of the pledge to the nuclear have-nots in order to stop them seeking to acquire their own weapons. Dissatisfaction among states without nuclear weapons at the lack of progress in achieving the aims of article VI is widespread. Let me remind the House that at the sixth non-proliferation treaty review conference in 2000 we signed up to

“an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed”.

In renewing Trident, we break that pledge and remove our moral credibility. How can we begin to persuade nations such as Iran to step back from the nuclear cliff edge unless we are at least prepared to step back from the precipice ourselves? I am not advocating a unilateral approach, but if this obsolete, expensive and unthinkable weapon has any value at all, surely it is as the means to bring others to the negotiating table. I am rather tired of being told, “It cannot be done” and that to advocate nuclear disarmament is to be incapable of understanding the complexity of the issue. Nor do I accept the argument that these weapons cannot be un-invented; we cannot un-invent biological weapons, but nobody is suggesting that we take that route to mutually assured destruction.

My concern is that as time distances us from the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the horrific consequences of nuclear war become clouded and remote, and that we lose our sense of outrage. In the event of such an outrage—even with a dirty bomb—would we seriously consider nuclear retaliation? Against whom would we retaliate? I am not alone in believing that among the greatest threats facing us is uncontrolled nuclear proliferation and the risk of these weapons then falling into the hands of those who would not hesitate to use them. I have received a great deal of correspondence, as I am sure many hon. Members have, from constituents opposed to the renewal of Trident.

I would ask the Secretary of State to address those real and present dangers, as well as the unknown future threats, by delaying Trident in order to persuade others to join us at the negotiating table. Specifically, I would ask whether any efforts have been made to do that; has any contact been made with those countries that lie outside the non-proliferation treaty—Israel, India and Pakistan? Even more importantly, has Trident been offered up as a means of persuading Iran away from its goal of acquiring a nuclear weapon? Surely that would be preferable to waiting for an Israeli strike against Iranian installations.

I ask Members to consider how secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is from falling into the hands of extremists. An area the size of Italy is underwater in Pakistan and it will rightly be the greatest recipient of UK overseas aid. Surely Pakistan cannot afford to waste precious resources on maintaining a nuclear deterrent—come to that, nor can we. I would rather have an effective Army, Navy and—I have an interest here—Air Force than spend at least £20 billion of their resources on a weapon that we can never use and that no longer acts as a deterrent. I call on the Secretary of State to delay his decision on Trident, not because I am an idealist, but because I am a realist. I call on him to protect our conventional armed forces and, specifically, to recognise that in my constituency, Britannia naval college is far more important.

I shall conclude by reminding the House that Alfred Nobel, of peace prize fame, was famously convinced that his invention of dynamite would make war too destructive to contemplate. We would be wrong to make the same mistake with Trident.

UK Armed Forces in Afghanistan

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

In view of what I am about to say, let me repeat what I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart): I pay tribute to the British soldiers who have served, to those who have died and, unfortunately, to the many who will die in the course of the next 12 months and longer. It is to be hoped that the spending cuts will involve no reduction whatever when it comes to looking after and giving every possible medical help to those who are seriously injured, when they return to Britain.

For some time, I have taken the view, which I have expressed on the Floor of the House, that our military role in Afghanistan should be coming to a close. Let us look at the period of time involved. British troops went into Afghanistan before the main NATO force, in November 2001. Our military intervention there has lasted nearly nine years, one third longer than the second world war and twice as long as the first.

Of course, no Member on either side of the House disputes the sheer brutality of the Taliban rule. No one disputes the Taliban’s contempt for those who do not share their views, their contempt for women, and their denial of education to people simply because they are female. All that is horrifying. We also know, only too well, about the public executions—the hangings that took place. We should, however, bear in mind what has been said by the Secretary of State for Defence, to some extent today but in particular when he took over the job last May. He said then that Britain was

“not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy”

in what he described as

“a broken 13th-century country”.

It was, he said, “our global interests” that must not be “threatened”.

It should be made clear to those who say that to leave Afghanistan would be to leave it to the mercy of the Taliban that we are not there to provide an alternative Government, to the extent of pursuing different policies. I concede with no hesitation that the presence of British forces and, of course, our allies in Afghanistan has made a difference that has been welcome in many ways. More women go to school, and other clearly desirable policies are being pursued. We must understand, however, that—as the Defence Secretary has made abundantly clear—we are not in the country for that reason.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that if we walk out of Afghanistan now, we will leave it to those very people, the Taliban? Does he want a bloodbath for the people we would leave there?

[Mr Winnick]

Obviously no one in the House wants a bloodbath. As for whether Afghanistan would be left to the Taliban if we went, we just do not know, but it should be borne in mind that at no stage did the Taliban have unanimous support as such. Before our military intervention, there was already constant military engagement against the Taliban in Afghanistan.