RAF Centenary

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

I have had to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) in these defence debates many times, and it never, ever gets easier. He is New Forest East’s answer to David Starkey when it comes to these affairs. The House is furnished with much knowledge as the result of his contributions. I pay tribute to him, on behalf of Scottish National party Members, for the sterling job he does as Chair of the Defence Committee. Despite our many disagreements, he is immensely fair to all the voices that make up that Committee.

I welcome the fact that this debate has been brought forward in Government time. Those who attend defence debates regularly will know that they are often requested, particularly by the Opposition. In fairness to quite a few Government Back Benchers, we do have more defence-related debates in Government time. Although this debate appears to be more of a tribute exercise as opposed to a defence debate, I will try to crowbar in some points that I think those on the Treasury Bench would do well to consider.

Before getting into that, however, I want to pay tribute to the Royal Auxiliary Air Force 602 Squadron in Glasgow, which is based in my constituency. It was a pleasure to spend a Saturday afternoon with its members a few months ago. It had been scheduled in my diary for an hour. It lasted five hours. That is no complaint: it was useful for me and I hope it was useful for them. I would like to pay particular tribute to the commanding officer, Squadron Leader Archie McCallum, who does a fine job at the base in Carmunnock Road representing the base and the RAF to the local community and the city of Glasgow.

Right next door to the Royal Auxiliary Air Force base in my constituency is Cathcart Old parish church, whose minister has done a lot of great work with veterans and members of the armed forces. In particular, there is a real focus on supporting those who served in the RAF. Indeed, I was actually selected as the SNP candidate for my constituency in the RAF café in Cathcart Old parish church, which is very active to this day. As Members would expect, in paying tribute to everyone who has served in the RAF over the past 100 years I want to pay particular tribute to the Scottish effort and contribution to the history and the future of the RAF, much of which we will hear about from others.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to family members who served in the RAF? My grandfather, Hugh Bowman, served in the RAF out of Glasgow. He used to tell me many stories when I was growing up about his time in the RAF, including how they would fill bullet holes with chewing gum.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Yes, is the answer to my hon. Friend’s question; I do not think that needs anything further from me.

The Royal Auxiliary Air Force base in Carmunnock Road in my constituency is not our only affinity with aviation, Mr Deputy Speaker. Indeed, if you were to come back to my constituency—you were kind enough to come, I think, around about this time last year—and take part in the Pollokshields heritage trail, you would walk down Fotheringay Road, which is not very far from my house, and come across a Historic Scotland plaque which marks the birthplace of the pioneer aviator James Allan Mollison. He was the first person to fly solo across the north Atlantic in a westerly direction, in August 1932.

I expect someone to jump to their feet when I mention that the connection to air defence at RAF Leuchars goes back to before the creation of the RAF.

[Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

My hon. Friend might want me to make my point first. [Laughter.] I think the balloon corps was based there from 1915, but I am probably about to get corrected by the MP for RAF Leuchars.

[Stephen Gethins]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I actually will correct him. It has been based there since 1911, so there is over a century’s association between Leuchars and our air services, if I can call it that. If I could further explain, Leuchars, although a military base—we are looking forward to the investment from the Ministry of Defence over the coming years—is a jewel in the crown for the MOD, given that it retains that fantastic runway and so has the ability to continue to serve the RAF and the rest of the military to this present day.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know he has a very good relationship with the base there: it is a solid part of the local community in his constituency. I am sure there are many great jokes to be made in future SNP adoption meetings about his being the MP for the balloon corps. I would not be so unkind as to illustrate them on the Floor of the House.

It was of course a tremendous act of foresight by this place—something it does not always get right—to create the Royal Air Force, the only one of the forces created by an Act of Parliament. The RAF went on to play a vital role in securing the security, dignity and freedom of millions not just in this country but across the world. I want to pay particular tribute to the RAF Benevolent Fund, which will be known to many Members, and the excellent work it does to support RAF families and veterans. It was an honour to join it in Edinburgh this year as part of the RAF100 celebrations, with other hon. Members.

To turn to more contemporary matters concerning the RAF, it is true that SNP Members have not always agreed with the decisions made by this and previous Governments on how they have chosen to deploy military force, but for the purpose of this debate, we can sit that to one side. However, we need a serious discussion and all wish to see serious progress on morale among those serving in the forces. The last continuous attitude survey showed that only 41% of those serving in the RAF were satisfied with service life and only 32% reported having high morale. The armed forces charity, SSAFA, found in 2016 that 40% of working-age veterans said that they were suffering from depression, 36% felt that they had a lack of hope or purpose, and 30% said that they had a mental health issue.

Somewhere around the beginning of the debate, it was mentioned that the Government brought forward a debate on the new veterans strategy. It is a good strategy and I sincerely hope that it delivers, but there has to be an acknowledgement of the lack of joined-up working and joined-up thinking on how we can tackle these issues. At Defence questions this afternoon, we heard about the work that is done, for example, by armed forces champions in different local authorities. I am not entirely sure what the make-up is in the rest of the UK, but in Scotland we have 32 armed forces and veterans champions in 32 different local authorities, and in some cases, we can have 32 different people doing 32 different jobs, because the role is not clearly defined. It seems that it is really what the champion chooses to make of it, and I think that those who have served in the RAF and the other forces deserve a bit more than that.

We have to consider these issues when we look at the larger issue of the recruitment crisis. I do not have the exact figures in front of me concerning the RAF, but I know that the House has shown great concern about this in the past.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is raising an important point about morale. Alongside the difficulties that he raises, does he agree that many people in the air force have very transferrable skills that are worth a huge amount of money in the private sector, and that as they get towards the mid-levels of their careers in the air force, the pressure on family life and the alternatives that are available mean that they move on and we end up with a deskilled air force? We still have top-quality people and top-quality equipment, but we are perhaps not as match-fit as we should be in the current climate.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct to raise that point. Indeed, the continuous attitude survey even found examples of large numbers of people in not just the air force but the other forces joining up for the purpose of getting a skill to then move out into the private sector. This cannot be a taboo subject that we dance around in such debates; we need to have a serious discussion about this and tackle it head on.

Let me turn to how we make the armed forces a more attractive career and a place that does not have such a movable workforce, with people going in to get a skill to then go into the private sector, as the hon. Gentleman said. The Scottish National party has introduced one proposal in particular that we believe could help to not just resolve some of these issues, but show that there is real political will to make the armed forces an attractive career prospect—it is on the issue of an armed forces representative body. This often causes some Conservative Members in particular to get a bit hot under the collar, but it is an entirely normal practice in several other NATO countries, in many of their armed forces, and it operates in different ways. The model that we suggest as a starting point is based much on that of the Police Federation.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood)—the Minister for defence people and the armed forces—said at Defence questions earlier that the reason we do not need to have a body or a trade union, or whatever we want to call it, is that the armed forces have Members of Parliament to do the bidding for them. Look around you, Mr Deputy Speaker—if this is the backstop for members of the armed forces, then my goodness, we are in much more trouble than some of us suspected. If we go back to video footage of the parliamentary debate on the veterans strategy, we see that we could have fit every MP who was here for that debate on to the Treasury Bench alone.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mark Lancaster)]

rose—

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I see that the Minister is anxious to come in, and I will let him. We are not proposing in the Armed Forces Representative Body Bill that we give members of the armed forces the right to strike—we do not agree with that—but we do think it is right that members of the armed forces should have a body on a statutory footing to make the case for the best possible terms and conditions as public sector workers who do the most extraordinary job in the public sector.

[Mark Lancaster]

Will the hon. Gentleman share with the House what evidence he has that there is any call from members of the armed forces for such a move?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

We put this in our manifesto at the last election—we put it in our manifesto for the election before that as well—and we returned 35 of the 59 Scottish seats that were up for grabs. Look, I am not sure to what extent there is polling on this—[Interruption.] Well, the Minister asked for evidence, and that is what I have got, but I am quite sure that he and those who sit on the Government Benches behind him want to take this issue seriously. I say this as no criticism of the shadow Front Benchers, but we have brought forward a proposal. Let us get something together so that we can start to have a serious discussion. At the end of the day, we all want the armed forces to be a serious and attractive place to go. My goodness, it has many, many problems, so let us have a discussion. The Scottish National party—indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) introduced this Bill—will aim to produce a Bill, and I will make sure that it gets sent directly to the Minister, as a starting point for where we can take things.

[Stephen Gethins]

My hon. Friend is being generous by taking a second intervention from me. I stress to the Minister that a good idea is a good idea that is worth exploring, and I know that he will do this in good terms. I have even spoken to Ministers about families as well, because when we talk about backstops and support, we have to remember military spouses. On that, I recommend Leuchars co-working hub, where some of the military wives—it does tend to be the military wives—have worked together to provide support for businesses. The best back-up that our military and RAF personnel have is their families. They deserve our support, and my hon. Friend’s idea is an excellent one, which is supported by a number of families, too.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct: a good idea is a good idea. It has been introduced with the genuine best of intentions, and I hope that the Government will see it in that spirit.

The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), mentioned the issue of funding, which also plays into the whole notion of whether a young person today would choose to sign up to the armed forces. If they were to spend any time at all looking into how the armed forces are funded—the pages of The Times newspaper are usually where someone can read all about this—it would cause them some concern. SNP Members have offered to the Secretary of State and his team of Ministers to try to get to a sustainable level of funding for the MOD, because that is clearly not there now. The shadow Secretary of State mentioned the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee reports that show that the affordability gap in the equipment plan has got worse, not better—indeed, the best-case scenario has got worse by around £3 billion.

We can really only hold our fingers in our ears about this issue for a certain amount of time. Again, we have brought forward another good idea. Indeed, the former Minister, whose constituency has gone right out of my head, but who chose to resign from the MOD over the Brexit issue, said that he would consider our proposal of multi-year defence agreements to try to bring some sustainability to how the armed forces, such as the RAF, can be funded. Again, this is an entirely normal practice in other NATO member states and in other European countries. It helps to take the heat out of how defence is funded—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) shouts that the Minister was the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). The proposal could help to take the heat out of some of that discussion and put some proper weight behind what the MOD want to achieve.

In that context of what the MOD wants to achieve, what is the role of the armed forces, and what is the role of the RAF to be? We thought we would all see that in the modernising defence programme, a programme that is now so steeped in controversy that I am not sure whether anyone will be able to take it seriously when it is published. We were supposed to see something earlier this year that would be linked with cyber-security and cyber-defence, but that was hived off in about April, which I think was a sensible decision.

The Government then promised to produce the programme before the summer recess, but instead the House was treated to—I think—four or five paragraphs in a written statement on the day the House rose for the recess. My nephew could have written that in a couple of hours, and he only started high school this year. It is really not on. If I were in the armed forces, looking on, I would be thinking, “What on earth is going on at Government level to ensure that we have the necessary equipment and funds so that we can continue to have the fine armed forces that we deserve?” When will the modernising defence programme be published so that the House can consider it?

I said earlier that creating the Royal Air Force was a tremendous act of foresight by Parliament. I think that we now need to revisit these questions: what is the modern Royal Air Force set to achieve for the United Kingdom and its allies, and what is its role to be in a changing threat picture involving kinetic and hybrid threats? I accept that we cannot give any serious answers in the time that remains this evening—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

There is plenty of time.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I do not want to prevent others from showing their worth, Mr Deputy Speaker.

That is the level to which Parliament needs to take this debate. I think that Parliament is up for it; I just hope that the Government are as well.