CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for the terms in which he, broadly speaking, has addressed the UK’s recent diplomatic activity. I have just a couple of points to come back on. He talks about the UK breaking international treaties. I do not know what he is talking about there, but if he was talking about what we are doing in respect of the Northern Ireland protocol, that is not what is happening. We believe that our prior obligation, which I would have thought he supported, is to the balance of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. That is what we are supporting. He talks about the UK’s ability to win people over. It was striking in the conversations I had with leaders from around the world how few of them, if any, raised the issue of the Northern Ireland protocol, and how much people want to see common sense and no new barriers to trade. What the UK is doing is trying to reduce pointless barriers to trade and one would have thought that he supported that.

On the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s points about the UK’s contribution to NATO and to the new force model, and whether that is sustainable, I suggest that Opposition Members should talk to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg about what the UK is producing and committing—it is colossal. We are the second biggest contributor to NATO and the second biggest contributor of overall support for the Ukrainians, providing £2.3 billion in military assistance alone. We are also ensuring that our armed forces are provided for for the future, with £24 billion in this spending review—the biggest uplift in defence spending since the cold war. Defence spending is now running at 2.3% of our national GDP, which is above the 2% target. That is felt around the room in NATO; people know what the UK is contributing and are extremely grateful.

As for what the UK also contributes to NATO, under the new force model, we will contribute virtually all our naval forces. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman also knows, we are the only country to contribute our strategic independent nuclear deterrent to NATO. I still find it a sad reflection of the Labour party that, at this critical time, when Vladimir Putin is sadly using the language of nuclear blackmail, we are in a situation in which the principal Opposition party in this country still has eight Members on its Front Bench who voted to discard our independent nuclear deterrent, including the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). Apart from that, I welcome the terms in which the Leader of the Opposition has responded.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I very much welcome the Prime Minister’s statement. I ask him: was there general agreement at all three summits that our fragile rules-based order is under threat, and that strategically we have entered a profound era of geopolitical change? I commend his efforts in Ukraine—it is a shame that other NATO countries have not lent as we have—but I encourage him to go further and secure a UN General Assembly resolution to create a humanitarian safe haven around the critical port of Odesa, so that vital grain exports can reach not only Europe, but Africa, to prevent famine there.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend particularly for his point about grain exports. As he knows, the work is being led by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The UK is doing a huge amount to support but, as I have told the House before, we may have to prepare for a solution that does not depend on Russian consent, because that may not be forthcoming.

Sue Gray Report

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That evening was extensively investigated, to the best of my knowledge, and I do not believe I can improve on what Sue Gray has had to say.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

This is a damning report about the absence of leadership, focus and discipline in No. 10, the one place where we expect to find those attributes in abundance. I have made my position very clear to the Prime Minister: he does not have my support. A question I humbly put to my colleagues is: are you willing, day in day out, to defend this behaviour publicly? Can we continue to govern without distraction, given the erosion of the trust of the British people? And can we win a general election on this trajectory?

The question I place to the Prime Minister now—[Interruption.] I am being heckled by my own people. If we cannot work out what we are going to do, the broad church of the Conservative party will lose the next general election. My question to the Prime Minister is very clear: on the question of leadership, can he think of any other Prime Minister who would have allowed such a culture of indiscipline to take place on their watch? And if they did, would they not have resigned?

[The Prime Minister]

To answer the question that my right hon. Friend put to all of us on these Benches, I think the answer is overwhelmingly and emphatically yes, we are going to go on and win the next general election and we are going to get on with the job.

Ukraine

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I understand the right hon. Lady’s concern but believe she is in error in what she says, because we can certainly target members of the Duma, Abramovich is already facing sanctions and in the announcements I have made today Gennady Timchenko, to whom she just referred, is specifically targeted; he is on the list, as are Boris Rotenberg and Igor Rotenberg. These are people who are very close to the Putin regime, but, as I said to the House, they are just part of the first barrage.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s efforts today, but Russia’s actions move us into a new and more dangerous phase of the crisis and require us to adopt a more robust, long-term approach to defending European security outside NATO’s borders. Sanctions alone will not be enough. Indeed, untargeted sanctions may play into Putin’s plan to pivot Russia ever closer to China. So would the Prime Minister agree that NATO must not be benched? It was created to uphold European security, and we must now consider how we utilise our formidable hard-power deterrence in responding to Ukraine’s calls for further help, not excluding the formation of a potential no-fly zone.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to place the emphasis he does on NATO, which has proved its value in the last 70 years. It is the pre-eminent, most successful alliance in history. It is a defensive alliance and we are now reinforcing it all across the eastern perimeter. What NATO is not doing—no NATO country is currently considering this—is sending combat troops to Ukraine, and he will understand the reasons for that, but that does not preclude support by NATO countries for Ukraine, including military support.

Ukraine

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I am glad that he supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. He is right to ask about the assurances that this country has given to Ukraine. I have repeatedly told Volodymyr Zelensky, as I told his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, many times, that we stand four-square behind the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine and we always will. We have a hard-hitting package of sanctions ready to go. It would be fair to say that we want to see our European friends ready to deploy that package as soon as there were any incursion at all by Russia into Ukraine.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks what we are doing to track down Russian money in this country and in the City. As he knows, we are bringing forward measures for a register of beneficial interests. I do not think that any country in the world has taken tougher action against the Putin regime. It is this Government who brought in Magnitsky sanctions against all those involved in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. It is this Government who got the world together—got 28 countries together—to protest against the poisoning in Salisbury. The world responded to that British lead by collectively expelling 153 diplomats around the world.

I am grateful for the general tenor of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s comments and his support for NATO—belated though it may be from the Opposition Benches. I am grateful for it now. What I can tell him is that that same leadership in assembling a response to Russian aggression is being shown by the UK now, and it is absolutely vital that the west is united now, because our unity now will be much more effective in deterring any Russian aggression. That is what this Government will be pursuing in the days ahead.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

As the Prime Minister articulates, the west is now regrouping, but the penny is also dropping: the threat of sanctions will not deter the Russian aggression, and a total or even partial invasion will have severe economic and security consequences felt right across Europe and beyond. Ukraine’s grain exports to Africa will be affected, global gas prices will be impacted and skyrocket, and where might an emboldened Russia turn to next? I ask the Government to liaise with the United States and consider a simpler and more effective option to deter this invasion by belatedly answering Ukraine’s call for help. It is not too late to mobilise a sizeable NATO presence in Ukraine, utilising the superior hard power that the alliance possesses to make Putin think twice about invading another European democracy.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend very much and I know that, emotionally, many people will share his view. He knows a great deal about Ukraine and the issues that that country faces. Of course, instinctively, many people would yearn to send active physical support in the form of NATO troops to Ukraine. I have to tell him that I do not believe that to be a likely prospect in the near term. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but what we can do—and what we are doing—is send troops to support Ukraine. I have mentioned the training operations that we are conducting under Operation Orbital, as we have for the past six or seven years, training 21,000 Ukrainian troops. Of course we are now sending defensive weaponry, which I think is entirely appropriate. We have sent 2,000 anti-tank weapons to the Ukrainians and we join the Americans in that effort; as my right hon. Friend knows, the Americans have sent about $650 million-worth of military assistance to Ukraine. That is the vital thing to do to stiffen Ukrainian resistance, but the real deterrent right now is that package of economic sanctions. That is what will bite; that is what will hurt Putin; and that, I hope, is what will deter him.

Armed Forces Bill

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 13th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I am pleased to speak in this important debate. The Armed Forces Act 2006, which the Minister mentioned, needs to be upgraded, so the Bill needs to pass in this House. It was introduced in January and here we are, almost at Christmas. I will stand corrected—perhaps he can clarify—but if we do not pass it, the armed forces are not beholden to Parliament. Given the experience of Parliament and Government in recent weeks, it would be unwise to have an untethered armed forces at this juncture.

Bills often ping-pong backwards and forwards between here and the other place, but we should bear in mind who it was in the other place that actually scrutinised this Bill. They are senior figures in the justice system, but they are also ex-senior military, who understand the very issue in detail. This has not been thrown back to us just to test the will of this House; it has been thrown back, now for a second time, because there is something serious going on here. I think the Government now find themselves in isolation, and on their own compared with all the charity groups, the Opposition and indeed—dare I say it—the Defence Committee. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton), who has taken through, over the last 18 months, the women in the armed forces inquiry, which reported only last week. The Minister has very kindly responded to that—not least here in this House, but also in a Westminster Hall debate—but we know all the arguments and what is on either side of this.

The Minister mentioned salami slicing, saying that if we were to go down the road of allowing the civilian courts to deal with murder, manslaughter, domestic violence, child abuse, rape and sexual assault, it would somehow dilute our ability to hold the armed forces to account. By their very nature, our armed forces are expeditionary in what they do, but he knows perfectly well that the yellow card, and indeed the rules of engagement, work extremely well overseas. This is to do with what happens here in the UK, and there is a disjunction between those who actually go through the civilian courts and those who go through the military courts. I am afraid that there is an absence of military experience in dealing with such difficult cases, which is why we are seeing such a disconnect between the conviction rates for civilians and those for the military.

I look to the Minister and say thank you for moving this far, but time is running out and we need to get this Bill through. I do hope that he will hear the concerns not just of this House and of the Committee, but of Justice Lyons. He did a service justice review for the armed forces when I was in the Veterans Minister’s shoes. When I was sitting on the Front Bench as Minister for the Armed Forces, I asked Justice Lyons to consider where this should go and what was his conclusion. His recommendation was exactly what we are calling for today. So I ask the Minister to recognise the wealth of encouragement, and also to recognise that this is nothing to do with salami slicing. This is to do with services for our armed forces personnel, and that is what we are calling for today.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

There is a debt of gratitude that we owe to members of the armed forces, and we have seen that acutely over the last few days as they mobilised to help with the vaccine booster campaign. I received my booster on Friday, and there was certainly a large armed forces presence there. As well as thanking members of the NHS, I would like to extend my gratitude to members of the armed forces who are contributing to that campaign over the next few weeks.

As we renew the Armed Forces Act, it would have been great if we had done so with some provisions that delivered a real impact for members of the armed forces. I suppose the litmus test for this is: will members of the armed forces notice any real difference as a result of this legislation? I think that for the majority the answer, sadly, is no, and that is disappointing.

The Lords amendments today are a final attempt by those in the other place to flesh out the provisions of this Bill, and to attempt to improve what had been billed as a great opportunity to improve our offerings to those who serve. It is disappointing that the expertise of Members of the other place, which was mentioned by the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), has essentially been disregarded. That is not how this should work. I am not a great fan of the other place myself, but I must admit that there is real legal and military expertise there that was not listened to or paid attention to, which is disappointing.

What would we have liked to see? We would have liked to see improvements in service accommodation. As the Bill progressed, the SNP put forward very modest amendments on this, such as asking that the basic standards of accommodation for social housing should also apply to members of the armed forces. That was a reasonable amendment, but it was thrown out. We saw no movement on visa fees for Commonwealth service personnel. There was the idea that they should serve for 12 years before we even consider this, but that is utterly unrealistic; it is not a reasonable position for us to take.

Defence Committee

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Atherton]

I thank the hon. Member for his question. He has been extremely supportive throughout this work, and, like me, sits on the Defence Committee. He is quite right: we both identified that we needed to make sure that the voice of the junior ranks was equal to that of the senior ranks. I know that the Ministry of Defence has referred back to the women’s defence network, and I have assurances from the Secretary of State that there was junior rank representation on that Committee. As far as leadership is concerned, the MOD has introduced a raft of initiatives around leadership. Performance assessments have been adapted to make sure that underperforming officers are sanctioned with a process that makes it easier to get them removed from their positions, but we, the Defence Committee, will keep a watching brief on this.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend who has done such an amazing job. It proves the importance of scrutiny and what can be done with a sub-Committee, and it was a pleasure to participate. It was also quite shocking to hear some of the evidence from across all three services. We have now opened up all appointments to women across all three services, but, clearly, there is a lot more to do. The fact that we got a 40-page response from the MOD is significant and shows how seriously the work is being taken. I ask the Minister to consider this question of taking serious offences out of the military courts and into civilian ones, and I say well done to my hon. Friend for standing firm on this belief. The Justice Lyons report also said that this view should be recommended. I understand that the position cost my hon. Friend her Parliamentary Private Secretary’s job. I hope the Whips will recognise why she had to stand firm, and that it will not be too long before she is back into that post. I say well done to her. I am pleased that we are able to explore these matters further in the Westminster Hall debate this afternoon.

[Sarah Atherton]

All I can say to my right hon. Friend is thank you very much.

Women in the Armed Forces

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to participate in this important debate, Dr Huq. It follows on from the statement that was made earlier. I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton) on putting together an incredible report and on leading the Sub-Committee, which provided some of the solutions that we are looking at here today.

I start by touching on the bigger picture, because we are rightly proud of our armed forces. One question we posed in this inquiry was to ask those who participated in it whether they would recommend joining the armed forces to others. The underlying answer was absolutely yes, but that does not disguise the deep and concerning problems that we are just starting to discuss here today.

It is worth outlining the important societal bond that our military have in the United Kingdom, which is arguably unique in the world. We recruit from the gene pool of the general public. If it is not attractive, does not reflect society or if we are not able to take advantage of the skill sets out there, we will not have a professional Army, Air Force or Navy. When we recruit, it is important that the rest of society sees how well we treat those who serve, whether they be reservists or regulars, and how well they are then looked after when they pack up their uniform for the last time, slide it across to the quartermaster and become a veteran. So, it is important that we look at the questions posed here and some of the concerning answers that have already been touched upon.

As we deal with these issues, my concern is that it is not the first time that they have been raised. We have spoken about the Wigston review and we had the Lyons report. This is not the first time that we are addressing these issues, but this is a comprehensive report. I hope that, in his response, the Minister will recognise why we need not just answers but to see the changes taking place, so that in a year’s time the Defence Committee does not have to undertake another report or call upon another independent study, as I had to call upon the Lyons report about justice only a couple of years ago.

The world is getting more dangerous; we are aware of that. The integrated review confirms the fact that the threats are increasing, and that there is an increased ambition for us to play a role on the international stage. To do so, we need to ensure that we attract the best. It is wonderful to see that every single role in the Army, the Air Force and the Navy is now open to both males and females. Whatever their sex, people can still do whatever role they want to do, whether they want to fly a plane or drive a truck or a tank. They are no longer prohibited from making their mark in whichever area they wish.

I will take advantage of the debate to say that this is probably the wrong time to be cutting the Army by 10,000, but ultimately that is for another day. In attracting the best, we want more women to come forward. I hope the Minister will acknowledge that the ambition for 30% of our armed forces to be female will be a challenge and a struggle; but if we answer some of the issues that we are dealing with today, that target will be a lot easier to secure.

I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham for doing such a superb job. The fact that we had more than 4,000 participants come forward to share their stories, some of them very harrowing indeed, is a testament to how important the inquiry has been.

I pay tribute to the MOD as well. Every time our Committee produces a report there is an obligation for the Department to reply, but rarely do we get a 40-page document of such detail. It is good to see that 33 of the recommendations have automatically been accepted. Others have been looked at with interest, but there are a couple that concern us that have already been touched on, and I will come to those in a second. As a summary of the work-life balance and the challenges facing women in the armed forces today, the report is an incredible outline of where we are.

Participating in some of the groups was very moving, but it is disturbing that our armed forces today are still subject to some of the prejudices and behaviours that I thought had disappeared long ago. I am very grateful to all those brave people who stepped forward and shared their individual stories.

The issues I have are, first, to do with flexible working. The Minister is aware that we now offer that, so that we can strike a better work-like balance, but it is subject to operational commitments. The studies of my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham on the Sub-Committee show that although flexible working is there on paper, in practice it is not taken up. Does the Minister have figures on what percentage of the armed forces take advantage of that?

Secondly, I echo what has been said about the serious offences. When I was sitting in the Minister’s seat, it was my view to honour the reflections of the Lyons study. Justice Lyons said that it was better for the serious cases of rape and serious assault to be moved to civilian courts, where there is the expertise, understanding and appreciation of how to deal with those offences. The military courts do not have that experience. They do not come across such events frequently enough to make the wisest of judgments. That is why we wanted the report to go forward.

Again I iterate what I said in the Chamber today. It was very brave, when the Lords amendment came up at the beginning of the week, for my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham to vote in favour of supporting it, only to be punished by the Whips Office because she stayed loyal to the report and recommendations that the entire Committee supported. I hope that, in their wisdom, the Whips Office will recognise that it is a little bit churlish and silly to go down that road. She had no choice but to do that, as did others, and I hope we will see her back in her role as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the very near future.

The issue of uniforms fitting is critical. We should be able to get that right in this day and age. I can remember when MOD ’95 came in. The Minister might recall from his own experience the big change that took place in equipment. It was quite a dramatic upgrade in what we had on the battlefield as infanteers. There was an awful lot more flexibility, but it was designed for men, not women, and that needs to change.

We need another revolution in how we are able to recruit and look after women in our armed forces. Historically, there have been some major changes—advances, even—not only in how the armed forces were seen, but in how they were perceived to operate. We had the Cardwell reforms of the 1870s and the Haldane reforms prior to the first world war. We now need another gargantuan step forward that embraces the offering that women bring to our armed forces. The statements that we hear frequently about global Britain, as outlined in the integrated review and the Ministry of Defence’s own mission statement, refer to our being a

“problem-solving and burden-sharing nation”.

Let us be that exemplar, and let us show how we mean to go forward in getting the best from our society and allowing them to serve our nation with pride.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Defence People and Veterans (Leo Docherty)]

I am pleased to respond to this debate and acknowledge the huge importance of the work carried out by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton). It was good to hear her speak in the main Chamber earlier.

We institutionally acknowledge that this is a groundbreaking piece of work, and we will use it as a positive lever, as I have said, to accelerate the necessary institutional change in support of all women serving in the armed forces. I note that the scale of the involvement of former and currently serving female service personnel was significant. The historical arc that their service represented, reaching back to Aden and going through to the 1990s and very recent years, was extremely useful. I hope that the report pointed out some positive improvements, but of course it also illustrated very clearly the huge amount of work that needs to be done. I reiterate that we see this as a very positive opportunity to drive change. That was why the Defence Secretary, when he was approached by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham, was very keen that serving female personnel be allowed to give their testimony. He thought that that was a necessary factor in improving the utility and currency of the report, and we are very pleased to see the outcome.

I am grateful for the several contributions in the debate. As well as the speech from my hon. Friend, I was very pleased to hear from the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and the hon. Members for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) and for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock). I will quickly address some of the questions before making some broader remarks.

I will address the issue of concurrent jurisdiction straight up. It was a common theme of today’s debate and was, of course, before the House on Monday night. Regarding some of the statistical analysis that has been done this afternoon, I think it will be useful if I point out that according to MOD figures, from June to November this year, there was a 50% conviction rate within the service justice system for rape offences. Over the past six months, of the 13 individuals tried at court martial for rape, six were found guilty and seven were found not guilty. That is why we have confidence in our conviction rate, but of course, we entirely acknowledge that it is too low, and that we must have a wholehearted institutional drive for better outcomes.

In the broader context, though, we regard it as important that we maintain concurrency as part of the service justice system capability. We are cautious, lest salami-slicing capabilities from the service justice system undermines the viability of the whole organisation. That is particularly the case because, as defence, we are expeditionary by design—designed to travel the world and war fight on behalf of the state—and we need an expeditionary justice system to travel with us. Of course, the numbers are very small and the scenarios often unique, but given that we are expeditionary by design and are sometimes required to operate in ungoverned spaces where there is no legal framework, we regard the ability to have an expeditionary service justice system as an important component, which we do not want to undermine by removing concurrency.

[Mr Ellwood]

The Minister is aware of the yellow card procedures and what happens in an operational environment, and he is absolutely right that conduct in those environments needs to be dealt with from a different perspective. The issue that we are trying to shed light on is what happens here in the UK. It is not salami-slicing. As we have said, it is clear that there is expertise in the civilian courts, so let us shift those cases across to the civilian courts, which have the experience that military courts do not. Justice Ministers have called for this in the past, and we are doing so here today.

[Leo Docherty]

I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for that intervention. Of course, the jurisdiction is concurrent, so the choice of where these cases are best heard remains with the civilian prosecutor. I am not saying that we should have an absolute approach to this: my point is that we need to retain concurrency because of the essential expeditionary nature of our work. However, in simple terms, the civilian prosecutor will always have the final say, and it is quite right that that is the case.

AUKUS

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for welcoming the statement and AUKUS. I will answer some of the detailed points that he made.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman began by asking whether AUKUS was in any sense adversarial to China and how we will manage the relationship with China. It is important for the House to understand that it is not intended to be adversarial towards any other power; it merely reflects how the close relationship that we have with the United States and Australia, the shared values that we have and the sheer level of trust between us enables us to go to the extraordinary extent of sharing nuclear technology in the way in which we propose. Obviously, we also have a shared interest in promoting democracy, human rights, freedom of navigation and freedom of trade around the world, which are values and perspectives that I hope the whole House will support.

On the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s point about NATO, the House should be in no doubt that the Government’s commitment to NATO is absolutely unshakeable and indeed has been strengthened by the massive commitments that we have made. With the biggest uplift in defence spending since the cold war—£24 billion—2.2% of our GDP now goes on defence spending. He rightly raises the question of our military relationship with France, which, again, is rock-solid. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the French, whether in the Sahel, where we are running a joint operation against terrorists in Mali, or in Estonia, where we have the largest NATO operation.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked reasonably about the jobs that this great project will unquestionably produce. What I can say is that there will be an 18-month scoping exercise to establish where the work should go between the three partners, but clearly there are deep pools of expertise throughout the United Kingdom, whether in Derby, Plymouth, Scotland or Barrow. I have no doubt whatever that it will bring hundreds of high-skilled, high-wage jobs of the kind that we want to see, and increasingly are seeing, in our country.

Finally, it is a pleasure to hear the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s change of heart about NATO—I had to say this, Mr Speaker, pain me though it does—after he only recently campaigned to install a Prime Minister who wanted us to withdraw from NATO.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

We must work with but stand up to China. This is about a more co-ordinated, long-term strategy in challenging China’s increasing, hostile dominance in the South China sea. But as the Prime Minister says, it is also a reminder of how we must work with alliances and rekindle an appetite to robustly defend international standards, so we cannot gloss over how bruised NATO now feels after the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I hope the Prime Minister would agree that there is an opportunity for Britain to help shape western thinking and reinvigorate international resolve in what we stand for and are willing to defend. Would he agree today that this initiative is in response to the increasing, constant competition that we now face? I hope he now recognises that our peacetime defence budget is no longer adequate, and we will soon need to increase it to 3% of GDP if we are to contain the threats that now we face.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend very much. The increase that we have seen in our defence spending is unparalleled in modern times. It is the biggest uplift since the cold war—£24 billion. I think everybody can see the value of that and the importance of that, and, by the way, it is enabling us to take part in this historic partnership in the way that we are. On his point about our relationship with China, I just want to be clear with the House. Yes, it is true that this a huge increase in the levels of trust between the US, the UK and Australia—it is a fantastic defence technology partnership that we are building—but from the perspective of our friends and partners around the world, it is not actually revolutionary. We already have been co-operating over, for instance, the Collins class submarines in Australia.

Afghanistan

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not put many questions to me. He made the general assertion that the Government had not been focusing on Afghanistan but, as far as I can remember, he did not even bother to turn up to the first of my three statements on Afghanistan in the House this year—I do not know where he was—such was his instinct and such was his understanding of the importance of the issue.

Actually, the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s figures are quite wrong. Before April we helped 1,400 people to safety from Afghanistan and, under the ARAP scheme, between then and 14 August we helped a further 2,000. As he knows very well, between 14 and 28 August this country performed an absolutely astonishing feat, and of course we will do everything we can to help those who wish to have safe passage out of Afghanistan. That is why we will continue, with our international friends and partners, to apply whatever pressure we can on the Taliban, economic and diplomatic, to ensure they comply, as they have said they will.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman should, in all candour, acknowledge the immensity of the achievement of this country’s armed forces in, for months, planning and preparing for Operation Pitting and then, contrary to what he just said, extracting almost double the number they originally prepared to extract. It was a quite astonishing military and logistical feat.

One thing I welcome is the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s congratulations to the armed forces for what they did.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

Veterans and families, and indeed the wider public, are asking what it was all for. Afghanistan is back in the hands of a dictatorship, terrorism is once again allowed to thrive, the people of Afghanistan now face humanitarian disaster and, more worryingly, the limits of UK and western influence have been exposed. With America now adopting a more isolationist foreign policy, we have passed the high water mark of western liberalism that began after the second world war. This is a dangerous geopolitical turning point.

Does the Prime Minister agree there is now a void of leadership in the west and NATO? If Britain wants to fill that void, as we should, it will require a complete overhaul of Whitehall to upgrade our strategic thinking, our foreign policy output and our ability to lead.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend deserves to be listened to with great respect on Afghanistan. From his service, he understands these issues deeply, but I must tell him that people listening to this debate across the country could be forgiven for not recognising that this country ceased military operations in Afghanistan in 2014. What we are doing now is making sure that we work with our friends and partners around the world to prevent Afghanistan from relapsing into a breeding ground for terror, to make sure that we use all the levers that we can to ensure that the rights of women and girls are respected, and to make sure that everybody who wants safe passage out of Afghanistan is allowed it. That is what we are going to do, and we will continue to show leadership in the G7, the P5, NATO and all the other forums in which this country leads the west.

Afghanistan

Tobias Ellwood Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that we are ceding back the country to the very insurgency that we went in to defeat in the first place, and that the reputation of the west for support for democracies around the world has suffered? There are so many lessons to be learned from what happened over the last 20 years. Will he now agree to a formal independent inquiry into conduct in Afghanistan?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said in the House just a few weeks ago, there was an extensive defence review about the Afghan mission after the combat mission ended in 2014, and I believe that most of the key questions have already been extensively gone into. It is important that we in this House should today be able to scrutinise events as they unfold.

As I was saying, we succeeded in that core mission, and the training camps in the mountain ranges of Afghanistan were destroyed. Al-Qaeda plots against this country were foiled because our serving men and women were there, and no successful terrorist attacks against the west have been mounted from Afghan soil for two decades.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

I do not often mention my brother Jonathan, who was killed by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Bali in 2002. That prompted my personal interest in Afghanistan, a distant country that I visited a dozen times over the past two decades to better understand what we were doing to help to rebuild that troubled country. I pay tribute to our armed forces for what they did, and to what the Secretary of State for Defence and the armed forces are doing today in the evacuation.

It is with utter disbelief that I see us make such an operational and strategic blunder by retreating at this time. The decision is already triggering a humanitarian disaster, a migrant crisis not seen since the second world war and a cultural change in the rights of women, and it is once again turning Afghanistan into a breeding ground for terrorism. I am sorry that there will be no vote today because I believe the Government would not have the support of the House.

The Prime Minister is not in the Chamber, but he says that the future of Afghanistan is not written. Well, its future is very much more unpredictable because of our actions. I do not believe for a second that there will be a peaceful transition to the Taliban. They are not universally liked in the country. The Uzbek and Tajik warlords are regrouping as we speak. The Northern Alliance will reform once again and a bloody, terrible civil war will unfold.

[John Redwood]

Does my right hon. Friend have any advice for the Government on how they could take action to try to prevent the recurrence of a terrorist threat under Taliban control?

[Mr Ellwood]

My fear is that there will be an attack on the lines of 9/11 to bookend what happened 20 years ago, to show the futility of 20 years. We should never have left—I will come to that in a second—because after 20 years of effort, this is a humiliating strategic defeat for the west. The Taliban control more territory today than they did before 9/11.

I was born in the United States; I am a proud dual national and passionate about the transatlantic security alliance. Prior to him declaring his candidacy, I worked directly with President Biden on veterans’ mental health issues. He was the keynote speaker at a veterans reception here in the House of Commons, as my guest, so it gives me no joy to criticise the President and say that the decision to withdraw, which he inherited, but then chose to endorse, was absolutely the wrong call. Yes, two decades is a long time. It has been a testing chapter for Afghanistan, so the US election promise to return troops was obviously a popular one, but it was a false narrative.

First, the notion that we gave the Afghans every opportunity over 20 years to progress, and that the country cannot be helped forever so it is time to come home, glosses over the hurdles—the own goals—that we created after the invasion. We denied the Taliban a seat at the table back in 2001. They asked to attend the Bonn talks but Donald Rumsfeld said no, so they crossed the Pakistan border to rearm, regroup and retrain. How different the last few decades would have been had they been included. Secondly, we did not start training the Afghan forces until 2005, by which time the Taliban were already on the advance. Finally, we imposed a western model of governance, which was completely inappropriate for Afghanistan, with all the power in Kabul. That was completely wrong for a country where loyalty is on a tribal and local level. That is not to dismiss the mass corruption, cronyism and elitism that is rife across Afghanistan, but those schoolboy errors in stabilisation hampered progress and made our mission harder.

There is also the notion that we cannot fight a war forever. We have not been fighting for the last three years. The US and the UK have not lost a single soldier, but we had a minimalist force there—enough assistance to give the Afghan forces the ability to contain the Taliban and, by extension, give legitimacy to the Afghan Government. The US has more personnel based in its embassy here than it had troops in Afghanistan before retreating. Both the US and the UK have long-term commitments across the world, which we forget about. Japan, Germany and Korea have been mentioned. There is Djibouti, Niger, Jordan and Iraq, and ourselves in Cyprus and Kenya, for example, and the Falklands, too. It is the endurance that counts. Success is not rated on when we return troops home. Such presence offers assurance, represents commitment, bolsters regional stability, and assists with building and strengthening the armed forces. That is exactly what we were doing in Afghanistan.

Last year, the Taliban were finally at the negotiation table in Doha, but in a rush to get a result, Trump struck a deal with the Taliban—by the way, without the inclusion of the Afghan Government—and committed to a timetable for drawdown. All the Taliban had to do was wait. The final question is about whether the UK can lead or participate in a coalition without the US. Where is our foreign policy determined—here or in Washington? Our Government should have more confidence in themselves.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes perfectly reasonable and justified criticisms of the way the American Government came to a decision to leave in such haste, but like a number of other right hon. and hon. Members, the implication of his speech is that we somehow could have had an independent Afghan policy without the Americans. Can he explain how?

[Mr Ellwood]

First, the Americans are not leaving Afghanistan. This is a complete myth. The CIA will remain there, as will special forces and the drone oversight. Why? Because they will be haunted by another terrorist attack. It is the political inclination and the leadership that is disappearing—because of an American president, or two American presidents—and we could have stepped forward and filled the vacuum, but we did not. We need to have more confidence as a Government in ourselves, as we did in the last century. I thought that this was in our DNA. We have the means, the hard power and the connections to lead. What we require is the backbone, the courage and the leadership to step forward, yet when our moment comes, such as now, we are found wanting. There are serious questions to ask about our place in the world, what global Britain really means and what our foreign policy is all about.

We must raise our game. Why? Step back. We seem to be in denial about where the world is going. As I have said in the House many times, threats are increasing. Democracy across the globe is under threat and authoritarianism is on the rise, yet here we are, complicit in allowing another dictatorship to form as we become more isolationist. What was the G7 summit all about? The western reset to tackle growing instability, not least given China, Russia and Iran. Take a look at a map. Where does Afghanistan sit? Right between all three. Strategically, it is a useful country to stay close to, but now we have abandoned it and the Afghan people as well. Shame on us.

I hope that the Government think long and hard about our place in a fast-changing world. Bigger challenges and threats loom over the horizon. We are woefully unprepared and uncommitted. We—the UK and the west—have so many lessons to learn. I repeat my call for an independent inquiry. We must learn these lessons quickly. The west is today a little weaker in a world that is a little more dangerous because we gave up on Afghanistan.