Ministry of Defence

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is a very good point and that was a worrying incident.

On recruitment and numbers, the Public Accounts Committee “Army 2020” report notes that

“the Army’s recruiting partner, Capita, missed its regular soldier recruitment target by 30% in 2013-14 and it recruited only around 2,000 reserves against a target of 6,000. A huge step-up in performance is required if the Army is to hit its ambitious target of recruiting 9,270 new reserves in 2016-17. The size of the regular Army is reducing faster than originally planned but the size of the trained Army reserve has not increased in the last two years because more people have left the reserve than joined.”

We have shifted from an emphasis on the Regular Army to one that includes a very strong Army reserve. All the same, we still need a Regular Army, but we are not meeting targets for that either. Our force strength numbers are not up to scratch. In April 2016, we were short by 5,750 personnel. A year later, that had increased to over 6,000. By August 2017, it was over 7,000 and the latest statistics available show our armed forces are short of their full strength by 8,160 men. The problem is getting worse.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend highlights a very important point. What I cannot understand is why it takes the best part of a year for someone to be able to join the armed forces. Surely that should be addressed as a matter of urgency.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

There is clearly a problem, one I hope the Minister will deal with later. Why does it take so long to recruit? Are we putting off potential recruits with our very slow processes?

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[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I am going to make a relatively brief contribution to this debate. I wish to make one simple point, which I shall base on something I have mentioned before in this Chamber. First, for the record, I probably ought to draw the House’s attention to the fact that I have a family member serving in the armed forces.

What we should do first is bank the good news, which, as we all know, is that the armed forces enjoy popular support the length and breadth of this country. I have made mention before of the Territorials and cadets in my constituency, all of whom are greatly supported by the local communities. It gladdens everyone’s heart to see the cadets parade on Remembrance Sunday. Even better is when, as happens now and again, the 4th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland—the Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons—come to exercise their right to parade through my home town of Tain with bayonets fixed and colours flying. I assure Members that people from my home town and round about turn out in great numbers to see this. Equally, when HMS Sutherland pays her occasional visit to the county of Sutherland, at Invergordon in Easter Ross or indeed off the north coast, people are very pleased to see that warship.

I wish to take the opportunity to give my personal thanks to the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). He may not know about this, but a Royal Navy warship—a small one, I suspect—is going to visit Wick on 6 April. That is hot news in the royal borough of Wick and I assure him that the ship will be very well received. As a humorous aside, I might add that my own way of saying thank you to the 4th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland when it came to parade was to give the sergeants’ mess a bottle of very good whisky made in my home town which goes by the name of Glenmorangie. The commanding officer was not at all pleased with me for having done that, but I shall spare hon. Members the details.

So I have set out the basic premise on which I base my argument, which is that we have the foundation of good will, and the point I wish to make today is simply that we should build on it. In the past, small local projects could be undertaken by the armed forces for the good of the community. In the past, the Royal Engineers could come out to build a small bridge, repair a footpath and so on. One might say that that was not a wise expenditure of armed forces money, but they do have to train. We should try to get back to that kind of involvement of the armed forces in the community. I am not talking about doing this in a social work way; it should be a genuine involvement.

Mention has been made of how so many people are unaware of what the armed forces do and even of what NATO stands for. One way of reversing that decline is to get the people in Wick to come on board this warship on 6 April—they will learn something—and to come to see the 4th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland parading. That will build up knowledge, and will build up even further confidence in and enthusiastic support for our armed forces.

[Stephen Kerr]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good series of points about the outreach of the armed forces and their visibility. Ought we not to encourage the more widespread wearing of uniform by service personnel when they are going about their business in our communities? The standard practice is for them to wear civilian clothing, but wearing the uniform, as the American services do, would also raise the profile and recognition of our armed forces.

[Jamie Stone]

That point is extremely well made. I might say, for the amusement of the House, that when I was a lowly private in the 2nd Battalion the 51st Highland Volunteers I used to find that one of the best ways to get home after a long camp far away in a remote part of the highlands was to wear my uniform and hitchhike—invariably, one got a lift pretty fast.

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[Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. We are considering the way in which the Ministry of Defence spends its money, and I want to draw attention to an instance of the MOD spending money in a very unwise way. It is my belief that its funding of the Iraq Fatality Investigations unit is a misuse of MOD money—taxpayers’ money—that allows the unit to pursue soldiers and veterans in a vexatious and spurious manner, and is having a highly detrimental effect on the bond of trust that underpins the relationship between the Government and their soldiers. I call on the MOD to bring to an end its funding of the IFI unit.

I draw attention to the experience of a serving soldier and Iraq veteran, Major Robert Campbell, a decorated and injured soldier who has faced seven separate inquiries of one form or another into an historical incident involving the unfortunate death of an Iraqi teenager some 15 years ago. Major Campbell has been cleared and exonerated by all seven inquiries, the most recent of which concluded in December 2017. The service prosecuting authority decided that no charges should be brought. Some of the inquiries he had to endure also involved the now defunct and utterly diminished Iraq Historic Allegations Team, which brought about a series of inquiries driven by the discredited lawyer, Phil Shiner, who has now quite rightly been struck off.

Given the fact that the Government rightly acted to close IHAT, it is unfortunate that it seems to have been born again in the form of the Iraq Fatality Investigations unit. Such vexatious and spurious hounding of veterans and soldiers, with the use of taxpayers’ money, is entirely unacceptable and represents a betrayal of their commitment to their country.

[Stephen Kerr]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for giving way; he is making a powerful speech. What effect does the persecution of those who have served our country in conflict have on the morale of our armed forces?

[Leo Docherty]

My hon. Friend asks a pertinent question. It utterly diminishes the faith that our servicemen and women have in the Government’s commitment to minding soldiers’ backs. Soldiers deploy with the good faith that, no matter what, as long as they act honourably, the Government will back them up. Of course, soldiers expect to be held to the highest standard with regard to the law. That is the case with Major Robert Campbell and others. He has endured an inquiry into this historical allegation seven times over, and each time he has been exonerated. By great coincidence, just a few weeks ago he was awarded the Long Service and Good Conduct medal, and then he got a call to say—can you believe it?—that an eighth inquiry was under way. This situation must end.

I call on the Minister to tell the House in his concluding remarks how much the MOD spends on the Iraq Fatality Investigations unit; how many servicemen and women are undergoing investigation at this time; how many have been previously cleared of allegations against them; and what immediate steps the Department will take to bring about the end of the use of MOD money to pursue soldiers and veterans in this way.

The military thrives because there is an absolute bond of trust between those who serve and those who govern. If that is in any way undermined, it would be a huge dereliction of the Government’s duty to maintain that essential bond. I hope that the Government will act decisively, in the best interests of our soldiers, veterans, military community and our country as a whole.

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[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) and to congratulate the Members who have brought this debate forward. I find myself in the happy position of agreeing with much of what I have heard.

The armed forces of our country have been engaged in continuous operations for the last couple of decades, yet at the same time—particularly in the last seven to eight years—we have been dealing with a sustained programme of deficit reduction. That has not been mentioned in this debate in connection with the financing of our armed forces. The stress and strain that this has placed on our military is manifest as we ask them not only to do more in the world, but to do a more varied set of tasks while managing with fewer resources. This asks a lot of the men and women who wear the Queen’s uniform, but they wear it with commitment and pride, which is worthy of our respect. They put themselves on a path of service that puts them in harm’s way—sometimes in deadly harm’s way—on our behalf, and we should not forget that.

However, we should have gratitude not only to the men and women of our armed forces, but to those who support them in the supply chain. I am proud to have visited, and spent time with, the men and women who work at the Babcock military vehicle and armament repair facility at Forthside in Stirling. They told me their stories of deployment alongside our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are, in their way, as heroic and dedicated to the cause of defending our United Kingdom as the enlisted men and women, and their sacrifice and work is worthy of our celebration. These contractors and suppliers who support our military in theatre are a vital cog in the machine of our defences. It is one of our jobs in this Parliament to ensure that our military is well served by these contractors. The MOD would do well to remember its role as the customer and better leverage its authority as a customer with these contractors. I believe that there is room for improvement in that area in terms of value of money.

At present, there is a threat hanging over the future of vehicle and armament repairs in Scotland. I hope that Ministers will take the opportunity provided by this debate to confirm that the MOD expects such repairs to be carried out in Scotland in future. I very much regret that as things stand I appear to have failed to convince the MOD to exercise its voice of customer with Babcock and to site the mobile defence support group unit for Scotland in my constituency. That is a wrong decision, especially given the calibre of the highly skilled and extremely loyal workforce, whose support of our armed forces included, as I have said, regular and repeated tours of duty in war zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq. These workers are my constituents and I believe they deserve better from the MOD.

We cannot go on asking our armed forces to have the level and reach of the operational commitments we lay on them and expect of them while continuing to cut back on the resources available to them. I have a simple but effective slogan to summarise my position and that of a great many other Members across the House: no more cuts.

I turn to other matters. We should be very wary of Russia. I have a strong feeling for Russia, as you might know, Mr Deputy Speaker, because my son Luke, who is a constituent of yours, served two years in Novosibirsk in Siberia as a voluntary representative of our church. Over the two years he was there, he became very fluent in Russian and became a great lover of all things Russian, in particular the people of Russia. He has shared his enthusiasm for Russia with all his family, including me, and I have had the opportunity to experience the warmth and hospitality of the Russian people myself. However, the issue of Russian nationalism is a different story, as it is with the nationalism that has emerged all around the world. Nationalism is a destructive force that divides people and pits ethnicities and national identities against one another. Fundamentally, it is a poisonous ideology wherever it is found, and although it is often disguised in modern times, it is still a threat to our way of life and to the security and peace of the world. We must be ready to meet nationalism head on, to challenge it and to defend its victims.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Given what the hon. Gentleman has just said, does he support ending the Olympics, which are a competition between nations? There is a bit of nationalism there. End the Olympics!

[Stephen Kerr]

There is a great difference between nationalism and patriotism, which is far more wholesome. It is no mistake that the leader of the Scottish National party herself has said that she very much regrets the fact that the word “national” is to be found in the SNP’s party name. But I am not here to talk about the SNP, disappointed though its Members will be to hear that. I urge Ministers across Government to take seriously the direct warning by General Sir Nick Carter that Russia poses a major threat that the UK would struggle to confront without an increase in defence spending.

I also want to mention recruitment. I believe that subcontracting recruitment to a civilian business was not a good decision. Such recruitment cannot be determined by someone working with a spreadsheet, and I seriously doubt that any private company has what it takes to function as an adequate recruitment agent for the British armed forces.

Housing for our armed forces is also an issue. Some of the anecdotal stories shared with me about living conditions for service families are, quite frankly, nothing less than shameful. However, that is too broad an issue to be covered in the time available tonight.

We also need to be sure that our troops have the right equipment at the right time. There is a black hole in the budget, as has been admitted. We have laid orders for equipment that we do not have the money to pay for. If we are not careful—I say this as a member of the Select Committee investigating Carillion—we will find ourselves in a situation of robbing Peter to pay Paul that will become a vicious circle, and we all know where that will lead to.

[Vernon Coaker]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point out the difficulties that we can get into when we rob Peter to pay Paul. The Defence Secretary recently told the Defence Committee, in discussing the £300 million needed to support the development of the at-sea nuclear deterrent and the critically important Dreadnought programme:

“We have had to make sacrifices elsewhere in order to ensure that the programme keeps going”.

That is what this debate has been all about, and the hon. Gentleman is right to make that point.

[Stephen Kerr]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, my colleague on the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, for making that point.

In regard to capabilities, I very much regret the fact that the Royal Navy does not have the number of surface vessels that it requires to send both our aircraft carriers to sea at the same time with the prerequisite level of air and submarine protection. I lay that before the House as an example of the capability issues that we face. We further need to be sure that we are meeting the needs of modern warfare, as has been mentioned several times. The UK is vulnerable to cyber-attack, which presents a clear and present danger in terms of the peer-to-peer threat that we are living under.

Addressing these issues will require resources and a new range of skills for defence and for counter- attack. That is why I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement a few weeks ago of the defence modernisation programme review. It seems to me that this review came about because he was faced with a choice between two sets of unpalatable cuts. Our armed forces are not only an emblem of our national pride that symbolises our national values; they are also a vital tool to project British values across the world. I believe, as a Conservative Member of Parliament, that no Conservative Secretary of State for Defence should contemplate undermining our defences further with more cuts. We must give our armed forces the reassurance and the resources that they need to do the job, and an increase in the defence budget should be forthcoming.