Charities: Veterans Care Sector

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

Yes, it comes back to what I said about these groups, which, often out of a sense of duty, or as a result of identifying a gap in their local area, just step up and do it, for no other reason than to deliver care to our servicemen and women. We are very lucky to have that as a country.

Over the years, matched by this gratitude in many of us, there grew an increasing bewilderment at the MOD’s reticence to genuinely commit to the care of our men and women when they return home. I say “genuinely commit” carefully. Efforts have been made—of that there can be no doubt, but the truth is that we must measure the success of those efforts not simply by what we have put into them, but by the experience of those going through the system, readjusting to life after service, or finding a suitable quality of care for complex injuries suffered on the battlefield.

Now is the time to do this. In 2014, the UK ended combat operations in Afghanistan. That ended over a decade of two very intense and very public conflicts, which inspired the great British public to donate. Those days are now gone and we will not see them return anytime soon, such is the global political appetite for large-scale interventions of that type. This end of public operations and subsequent awareness of it, is conversely matched by a huge increase in demand for veterans services across the United Kingdom. In just the past year, referrals to Combat Stress went up 28%. The hidden wounds programme run by Help for Heroes has seen 500 referrals from a standing start a year ago. Regrettably, there is little evidence of a Government Department attempting to gauge the true scale of the needs of the veteran, serving and military family community as a whole. Nor is there evidence that the Government are trying to track progress against that need. How do we, as a nation, know, year on year, whether we are doing a good job or a bad one in this area? There were no universal measures of lives rebuilt or lives yet to be rebuilt that accommodate the good work that is already being done by the Ministry of Defence, the NHS, the Department for Work and Pensions, charities, British businesses and volunteers. Without strategic and structured measures implemented in a timely manner, therefore, a lack of action now will ultimately cost the nation more in the future in terms of the healthcare we offer to our veterans and their families and the finance required to maintain a fundamentally unsustainable model.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on highlighting an important national resource that may be going to waste. Today in this House we said goodbye to Principal Doorkeeper Milburn Talbot, who served in the Royal Navy and served this House with great distinction. There are many, many other veterans who transition very capably. For those who need a little extra help, is this not an investment in the whole country, not just in veterans?

[Johnny Mercer]

Absolutely. I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I shall not stray from the lane of this debate, but across the public service we have a special asset in individuals who commit themselves to public service and sacrifice their family life for the nation. If we do not look after them properly, that will eventually go. We need to make sure we get that right.

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[Johnny Mercer]

I could not agree more that local and national Government should be involved in delivering that. We need to be careful about the involvement of local elected officials in veterans care. There is nothing political about veterans. It is a national issue and one that I wrestle with in Plymouth. We need to make sure that we stay in the lane of delivering a service for veterans, and the local professional side of the council is well placed to do that.

To sum up, the individuals who are suffering most from the changing tides in the debate are the blokes. Too many are falling short. Too many struggle to access care. Every weekend another case is reported in the Sunday papers. While the national debate moves on to Europe, national security, the deficit and other important issues, those soldiers’ lives stand still, awaiting an intervention by somebody who cares. They are the lucky ones: their stories got in the paper, and they inevitably get helped by that knight in shining armour—the Great British public. However, for every one of them, there are many who do not get helped.

What is it really like for someone to be two or three years out of the Army—holding down a civilian job and providing for their family—when they start hitting rougher waters, and the thoughts just will not leave them alone? Where do they go? To whom do they turn? Do they self-refer to a charity and hope for the best? How do they know that it provides care that works? How do they know that it is professional? What happens if the course of treatment it provides does not work? Who will help them through the process? Who really cares?

The pre-Christmas report by the Ministry of Defence on the armed forces covenant made wide reference to what is going into the arena of military support, and that is to be commended. However, the report fails to provide any meaningful statistical reference to the single most important measure of success: what our military community got out of that support. The single biggest shift in mindset that must be achieved is about reconfiguring services around users.

There are problems: waiting times are simply too long; there are distinct regional variations in the services available; there is a huge challenge to veterans navigating a complex set of unclear treatment pathways; and there is a lack of regulation of the quality and efficacy of the treatments being provided by some, with some of the more unscrupulous outfits still receiving Government finance. The truth is that our veterans today use an array of treatments, which vary wildly in effectiveness, professionalism, access points and delivery, and that is especially so with mental healthcare.

I hope I have outlined why this debate is so important and so timely, and why it is tough for those of us who have been through these wars to let go of this issue, for which I am afraid I make no apology. I therefore want to add to the debate—to offer a solution to the Government so that we can get this issue right. I want the Prime Minister, who has always understood this issue, to accept that getting it right in this Parliament is part of his legacy, and I know that he does accept that. Chiefly, however, I want the MOD to really understand the challenge we face in getting this issue right now, and I make that appeal to the MOD today. There will always be better times to reform; there will always be opportunities to duck difficult issues because of the lack of a 100% solution; and there will always be those who have lost focus on who is at the centre of these services—the men and women to whom we owe so much.

How do we fix this? Users should be able to choose the service they wish, but they should be provided with unbiased assistance and helped to navigate their way through a highly complex array of services. We must be realistic in our reform. Currently, many of these services are not evidence-based, and some appear, unhelpfully, to compete for business, while a few are even unsafe or unethical in their approach.

If we are to produce the first-class service that the military service community and, indeed, the nation—having committed so much of its own money—deserve, wide-reaching but fair reform will be needed. That reform must be focused exclusively on the key principles of the following four streams: evidence-based treatment; a cultural shift, with the aim of creating not good veterans, but good citizens who have served; a service configured singularly around the service user, which will include service families; and clear and accessible care pathways.

It is worth noting at this stage that a sustainable model of future veterans care and support in this country cannot simply be modelled on how other nations have done this. We face a similar but subtler challenge in the UK, given our cultural and societal perceptions of serving and retired military service personnel and their families. Let me repeat that key point: veterans care must be singularly and exclusively configured around the needs of the user, with ease of access and dedicated casework management, rather than just signposting, at its core.

What do those four points look like in a little more detail? The future actually looks very similar to the present, but with key organisational, control and attitude changes. We are not looking at a huge demand or fiscal commitment to get this right. The Government must step up and take command of the national veterans challenge. Ultimately, it is the nation’s responsibility to care for our servicemen and women, and that must be realised.

The Government’s role in all this would be clear. They would provide access to service records. They would ensure there was a uniform access process across all providers, taking responsibility for a single point of contact. They would need independently to control the impartial case management of individuals, which would be focused entirely around individuals and their specific needs, which must be met. The Government must commit to providing interoperable case-management software and access to, or information about, NHS and other care providers’ data. Chiefly, however, they must accept some sort of legal responsibility for ensuring that there is that care pathway. The actual delivery of services would remain with the current providers across the charitable and NHS sectors.

What sort of reform is needed in the service charity sector? With our young men and women potentially at vulnerable stages in their lives, approaching almost anyone who can claim to provide a service, there can be no doubt that we need some sort of regulation—with a small “r”—of our service providers, which is something only the Government can do. It is not good enough to ask the veteran to shop around and bounce from charity to charity without resolving his issues. Too much has already gone into the system: too much time has been invested and too many cases have been exposed to allow that to continue.

I and everyone else in the sector are clear: nobody can tell a charity what to do—that is not what these reforms are about—but it would be naive to suggest that the entire sector is optimised at present to deliver care for veterans, which is a nation’s responsibility. With more than 2,500 military charities and funds, it is not realistic to suggest that there is no duplication, waste, bad practice or financial misdemeanours.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is, rightly, speaking passionately about military charities. I know I can speak today without fear of opposition about the fact that many charities have tried to come together at various points. Indeed, when I served in the Ministry of Defence and worked under General Richards, the then Chief of the Defence Staff, efforts were made to bring them together. There is, however, opposition to streamlining in many areas when so many different charities seek to fulfil a role in our society.

[Johnny Mercer]

Absolutely. This is the nub of the challenge when it comes to military charities and funds: how do we go about getting everyone to pull in the same direction? Some service providers need to consider whether they are exclusively configured around the user for whom they were originally set up to serve. Only a robust, dedicated and strong leadership team is capable of having that conversation, but I hold out hope that, with a vision of single-minded delivery in an increasingly challenging environment, charities can come together to identify their individual but equally special roles in the veterans care pathway and work together better as part of a greater machine and a greater cause than just their own. That requires leadership, including from the Government, but that will not happen unless we make a conscious move to provide it.

In my view, all groups that wish to provide a veterans’ service of any kind and raise money for anything related to veterans care, be it palliative or holistic, should be required by law to be part of an approved group, perhaps along the lines of Cobseo—the Confederation of Service Charities—but with teeth. In order to gain access to that group, service providers should adhere to a basic set of agreed standards on their suitability. Those standards could include showing a clear practice of evidence-based treatment, outcomes, a complaints system, independent financial oversight by a board of trustees, and refusal to accept individual cases that do not come through a single and agreed point of contact.

I am going to start wrapping up, because I want to give the Minister time to reply. I hope the House forgives me for going on for longer than I wanted to, but I wanted to take as many interventions as possible.

In summary, now is the time to get this right. The truth is that other allies are treating their veterans better than we are, and that cannot be right. We have this ever-closing window of opportunity. We owe it to this current warrior generation, who, like so many before us, gave the best years of our lives willingly in service of the nation, hoping that we would not be disadvantaged for doing so. The Conservative Government can deliver that, but current structures need to be reconfigured. A department for veterans affairs would be a huge step forward, but it must be given the cost-departmental authority required to deliver those changes. Veterans care is a multi-agency operation within Government. At the very least, the veterans Minister must have that cross-departmental authority.

Finally, I pay tribute to the veterans Minister, with whom I have worked closely on this area. He has achieved much already and I am sure that he will continue to do so throughout this Parliament, but the truth is that he has no cross-departmental mandate or resource to empower him, or a clearly identified budget. In the United States, the Veterans Administration budget for 2015 was more than £160 billion.

This Government have done more in this cause than any previous Government. That is unarguable. We have made real progress, but there is some way to go—there really is. This Prime Minister presents us with an opportunity to get this right for my generation. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to bring this issue before the House.

Iraq Historic Allegations Team

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) securing today’s debate. It is crucial that we not only support our service personnel but uphold human rights and have the UK show leadership in promoting international human rights.

Our armed forces carry out a vital role on our behalf, often in harsh and dangerous conditions. Their courage and professionalism are to their immense credit. As part of that professionalism, our armed forces should and must be able to justify their decisions and actions against clearly defined standards of conduct. When allegations are made that conduct has not met the high standards expected by both society and the armed forces, they must be taken seriously. When there is a case to answer, the case must be investigated fully and fairly.

Since the inception of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, a number of issues have arisen that require consideration, as many speakers have touched on today. They include the scope of the investigations, the considerable volume of the case load, the amount of time that has passed in some of the incidents involved and concerns about the credibility and veracity of the allegations. Each of those issues presents challenges to IHAT and to us, who oversee it, in the dispensing of justice.

The latest figures that I have seen indicate that 1,514 allegations have been reported to IHAT, making up 1,329 cases. Of those, 43 have been closed and 57 dropped, with 280 UK veterans under investigation. It is only fitting and fair that we are concerned about the number of allegations and the speed of the investigations, and it is no surprise that many hon. Members, including the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), have raised that issue.

I understand that IHAT has about 150 staff, so in my view, it is reasonable to question the speed at which cases are being dealt with. Indeed, if I were a member of a committee scrutinising the issue, I would have serious questions for witnesses and would be pressing them on the apparently slow rate of progress and for a comparison with other legal jurisdictions.

I fully understand that we are talking about a unique situation in many respects, given the challenges in investigating allegations. However, the rate of progress is an issue. The hon. Member for Newbury raised the issue of trails going cold on some of the investigations. We need to address that and face the reality that in some—indeed, many—cases, it might not be possible to get the evidence we need to establish whether an allegation is true. That might simply mean that the case cannot proceed, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that.

Turning to the credibility and motives of those bringing complaints, which many Members have raised, I have concerns that there may well be instances in which the current system is being abused, and that spurious allegations are being brought against military personnel and service veterans. The answer lies in ensuring that we have a system in place that allows the prompt dismissal of cases that are brought on flimsy evidence or are not evidence-based. In cases where evidence is found to have been falsified or deliberately distorted, I would want to see penalties imposed for what I consider to be akin to the criminal charges of perverting the course of justice or, at the very least, wasting police time, or its equivalent in Scottish law.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) said, our legal system in this area must uphold the values of the European convention on human rights, as well as other international human rights treaties. We have to work with other nations to set an example of our values on human rights. Some Members have expressed the desire to derogate from the convention, but that is not the right way forward. The European convention on human rights was born out of the horrific events of world war two, which rightly made the international community think very carefully.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very good point, but the problem with regard to derogation is that it was specifically intended by the authors to allow for operations outside the territory. The danger of the argument he is making is that the Scottish National party is turning soldiers from cannon fodder into courtroom fodder.

[Steven Paterson]

I will resist getting into party politics. This is a serious case and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman made his point very well there—[Interruption.]

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[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Penny Mordaunt)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) for securing this debate. He is a doughty champion of our armed forces and a former member of their number. I also thank, in particular, my hon. Friends the Members for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) who have spoken today and have been a great help to me in the work I have undertaken since May last year.

I also thank all hon. Members who have spoken in support of our armed forces today. We send them into harm’s way, dressed in body armour, to defend our freedom and national interest. It is not just their courage and capability that makes them the best; it is their values and the high standards we hold them to—values of self-discipline and self-sacrifice. Much of what they do in both war and peace is to uphold the rule of law, including international humanitarian law such as the well-known and well-understood Geneva conventions.

As a nation, we have chosen to invest in preserving and promoting those vital rules in armed conflict, ensuring they are reflected in all we do, and using our considerable reach to instil them in armed forces around the world. It is right that we meet the obligations on us to investigate credible allegations of human rights breaches, serious criminality and war crimes. How ironic then that those brave men and women, who do so much to protect and promote human rights and the laws that enshrine them, stand accused of wishing to exempt themselves from such obligations.

I will set out some of the shocking practices of those accusers, mainly two law firms, that concern us and what we are doing to meet our manifesto commitment. I will contrast that with the work of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team and provide an insight into its remit, its methods and some of the cases it has been dealing with which, if I do them justice, will reassure Members of the House and the armed forces.

I want to explain why protecting our armed forces from litigation motivated by malice and money is compatible with upholding human rights and the pursuit of justice, and that human rights and justice depend upon it. It is not about holding our armed forces above the law, as Leigh Day has suggested, but rather that we wish to uphold the primacy of international humanitarian law that helps to keep our armed forces safe, gives them the freedom to act in accordance with those laws, and protects human rights.

The ability to take prisoners, for example, is a well-understood good, and not being able to do so would have very grave consequences for both sides of a conflict. Any action that undermines or deviates from such rules is detrimental to our operational ability and to the safety of our own armed forces. We should make no apology for investigating and holding our armed forces to account for such actions. It is in our national interest to do so, as well as in that of the people who serve in our armed forces.

The steady creep of extending the reach of European human rights legislation, which was not written for conflict situations, is eroding international humanitarian law. The behaviour of parasitic law firms churning out spurious claims against our armed forces on an industrial scale is the enemy of justice and humanity, not our armed forces or the Ministry of Defence.

[Tom Tugendhat]

When I was interviewing various witnesses for the “Clearing the Fog of Law” report, the former Member, Jack Straw, was very specific about the reason for not derogating in advance of the Iraq conflict, which was that it was never thought that the European convention had extraterritorial jurisdiction. What other Members have called for—I particularly highlight my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis)—is very reasonable in the light of that experience.

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend is right, and he knows what he is talking about.

When the courts entertain claims against our armed forces of the likes of an insurgent bomb-maker suing us for not shooting him in a fire fight, but instead taking him prisoner and holding him until we could guarantee he would not face mistreatment in the local justice system, it is not just our armed forces who suffer the strain on them and the corrupting effect on their behaviour in the field; the cause of human rights suffers too. Today, when faced with the likes of Leigh Day and PIL, we need to wrap our service personnel in more than just body armour when we send them out to defend freedom.

Shortly the National Security Council will meet to decide on a number of options to address all the concerns that hon. Members have expressed this afternoon. Over the last eight months, extensive work has been going on in the MOD and the MOJ on these issues. Hon Members have mentioned some of the options that may be brought forward, and there are others.

Specifically with regard to spurious litigation being brought against our service personnel and the conduct of legal firms, the Prime Minister has announced that the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), and I will chair a working group to tackle every aspect of that, including conditional fee arrangements, legal aid rules and disciplinary sanctions against lawyers who are abusing the system or attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Against that backdrop, I understand that the work of IHAT has been tarred with the same brush. Hon. Members have spoken about why it was set up. It was to ensure that we have a domestic process as opposed to an international one. I want to give an insight into some of the cases, because they are illuminating.

In case No. 377, it was alleged that a passenger in a car was shot by an

“hysterical British soldier in a tank.”

That IHAT investigation ascertained that PIL had submitted the allegation in October 2014, despite Danish armed forces accepting liability for the incident and paying compensation in 2003.

In case No. 123, it was alleged that a 13-year-old girl had been killed when she picked up part of a UK cluster bomb that had failed to detonate. The IHAT investigation established that a 13-year-old boy had been killed, but was unable to ascertain whether Iraqi or UK munitions were responsible. PIL challenged the MOD’s decision not to refer it to the IFI—Iraq fatality investigations. The MOD defended the challenge on the basis of that information. Shortly before the hearing, PIL disclosed a witness statement by the boy’s father, made before the IHAT investigation, in which he said that the boy had been killed while in the vicinity of an Iraqi mobile missile launcher preparing to fire missiles into Kuwait that was destroyed by a coalition helicopter. There are many other cases that I could mention. It was concluded, after thorough investigation, that UK service personnel had acted in self-defence, in the defence of others, and lawfully.

IHAT enables us to meet our obligations to investigate serious wrongdoing, and its work is exonerating those wrongly accused and rejecting bogus allegations. I would add that the sniper case that my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury mentioned is not an IHAT case. Its investigators—a mix of service personnel, police officers and legal experts—are doing a public service, and I pay tribute to them. They feel their responsibilities keenly. Those investigators did not set up IHAT; we did. That was done not by anyone in this Chamber today, but by a previous Government, and for sound legal and policy reasons—there should be a domestic system of accountability, because without that there would be an international one. I hope that I have set the record straight on that. However, some questions remain for us, the politicians.

Does the existence of IHAT invite such claims? Were we not funding it, would fewer cases be brought? Why are so many cases brought and why are they so poorly researched, lengthening the investigation process? How can we speed that up? What support is given to our armed forces during the process? The work of IHAT is independent of the MOD, and we would not interfere with its investigations or work, but those are genuine questions to look at. It is right that we look at further ways of speeding up the process without compromising the quality of its output or its independence.

I can reassure hon. Members that we do all we can to support our armed forces through such investigations, and that support is also embedded in the practices of IHAT. It does give notice of investigations, and hon. Members must flag it up if they have heard of instances in which that has not been the case. Support that the MOD routinely provides to service personnel includes the funding of legal costs and, where appropriate, the funding of judicial reviews, as well as pastoral support. We fund medical assessments and applications to excuse from giving evidence veterans and serving personnel who are not medically fit to do so. Indeed, some in the judiciary have criticised the MOD for providing the level of support that we do provide. Those obligations remain, whatever the theatre in which the actions took place, whether it is Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland or elsewhere, but we recognise the cost of all this to our servicemen and women and to the public purse.

The al-Sweady case, in which our armed forces were exonerated and which resulted in Leigh Day being referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, cost the MOD and the British taxpayer £31 million to stage—£31 million, I would argue, that would be better spent on equipment and support for our armed forces. The status quo is financially unsustainable and morally unjustifiable. To put this right falls to us in this place, and we must all be resolved to do so. This issue and the solutions that we will bring forward are complex, but the objective is simple: we must protect human rights and we must protect those who defend them—our armed forces.

Armed Forces Covenant Annual Report

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am grateful to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Hanson. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) for his kind words on my paper, “The Fog of Law”, which was published a couple of years ago. That paper is only more relevant, sadly, given that various trials—we warned of them several years ago—are coming to fruition. Young men who took decisions on our behalf are being unfairly pressured into answering for actions that were fundamentally of the Government and therefore of this House, rather than their own. When considering the covenant, it is important that we consider the individuals—they are carrying out requests not on their behalf, but on ours.

I should immediately declare an interest, as I am still serving in Her Majesty’s armed forces as a reserve officer. I have many friends who continue to serve in uniform, and I am proud to say that they do. The points I was going to make on the military covenant have already been made, so I will limit my comments a little more than others may have needed to.

The fundamental point of the covenant is that it is not just something that we give to those in the armed forces: the possibly 1 to 4 million people that my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire referred to; it is actually how we ensure our own future. All relationships and human interactions are fundamentally reciprocal. In the give and take of the armed forces covenant is the extension of the commitment we make to our troops. It is the extension of buying a proper uniform, of making sure the troops are properly armed, trained, paid and motivated. Part of that is the covenant. If we get that wrong, we not only fail to look after those who served us with great honour and courage, but we weaken ourselves, because we discourage the best and the brightest of every generation who have served with great fortitude in our armed forces. Indeed, everyone from the grandson of the monarch to the grandson of anybody else has served in our armed forces.

We discourage people from serving, and in doing so we weaken ourselves. I therefore argue that the military covenant is not an act of generosity or normalisation, but of self-defence. We must look at it very clearly as such, because self-interest in this area is sometimes the way to get the best result out of the Exchequer. The Chancellor has already been generous, as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) identified, but it is important that we do not see the stories, which we occasionally see, about servicemen having to sell homes to fund the purchase of prosthetic limbs, and it is important that other veterans are not forced out of the family home in search of medical help. We need to make sure that such duties are taken on by society, not only because it is the right, moral and honourable thing to do, but because it is the best, safest and most sensible thing to do.

I look forward very much to our covenant coming to fruition and the reports building one upon another, so that we get to a state where what we are really arguing about is tweaks and turns and not substance, because, as we build up that covenant, we build up our own defence. That covenant is not only about the individuals, but about the families. When I speak to serving members of the armed forces today, I know that part of that covenant is also about the way in which we treat the serving families. I am particularly struck time and again when people—my friends in the armed forces—talk to me about things such as continuity of education. Some people have seen it as a luxury; some have said it is a way to support various families to continue a form of education that has long gone from most people in society. It is not. It is a way of ensuring that families who move around—men and women who serve overseas at the drop of a hat, who leave home and family and go away—can continue to ensure that their children are properly cared for; that they enjoy the opportunities that they rightly deserve; and that, where the family is staying at home in one location, they enjoy it.

How do I know that? If we look at any large employer or any of the large multinationals that regularly move people and take staff and say, “You were a director of X in London; you are now a director of Y in Paris, New York or Nigeria,” one of the essential parts of the package of employment is always education. No father or mother will accept to impoverish their children’s future. It is wrong that we should ask serving members of today’s armed forces to do that, which is why I strongly support the continuity of education allowance. It is essential not only in terms of recruiting and maintaining the quality of personnel—officers and other ranks; many apply for it—but to guarantee the commitment to maintain that we have the best and the brightest for the future.

I want to talk a little about the law. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire has spoken extremely eloquently about it. The law can be used in both ways. It can be used quite rightly to support the actions of our armed forces and to defend them. That is exactly what the Geneva convention is for: to control and regulate the conduct of operations in battle. However, it is also right that we use the appropriate law. Sadly, in recent years a legal doctrine has grown up in which we have started to use inappropriate legislation, and we have started to treat soldiers as policemen. Once again, this is not just a nicety and choosing which element we like or do not like; this is fundamentally about the security of the state and the liberty of the individual. If we start to view people who are not policemen but soldiers and treat them like civilians, various operations become impossible.

It would be wrong to ask the police to storm a building knowing that they would take casualties of 5% or 10%, and yet we asked young men to do that on the beaches of Normandy. It would be wrong to ask the police to go into a riot situation knowing that five or 10 of them would probably be killed, but that is exactly what we did at Mount Tumbledown in the Falkland Islands. We do it again and again, because what we ask servicemen to do is not the job of a civilian. It is not the job of a policeman, a doctor or a fireman; it is something more than that. We literally ask them to put their lives on the line.

The deal is up to death, and that deal makes the covenant different, but it also means that the legal protection that is required to enable soldiers to act and to operate is also different. They must have the right to act. They must have the ability to act in a sensible and reasonable way. This does not mean that they must have the right to break the law; they do not and should not. This does not mean that the Geneva convention is irrelevant; it is not and it should not be. This does not mean that they should be allowed to commit murder, rape, looting or anything else. They are not and should not.

What it does mean is this: soldiers take split-second decisions—hard decisions—that young men and women were taking every day when I was in Afghanistan and Iraq. The 18 and 21-year-olds—junior commanders; sometimes more senior—were taking split-second decisions and then, 10 years later, in the cool of the courtroom, were being asked to justify to people who had never walked on to a beach without getting into a sweat how they could have made such a decision, evaluated the situation they saw before them, and taken a call. What was actually happening was that the serviceman or woman in question was being asked to justify the decisions of this House that sent them there, and that is wrong. That is why it is right that the appropriate law, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire put it, is the law that should apply, and not the European Court of Human Rights. In this case I have argued against various articles, in the paper “The Fog of Law”.

There is another point I want to make about the covenant: it must apply as widely as we can make it. Many have served our armed forces with huge honour and distinction around the world, and I include the enormously courageous interpreters I served with in Afghanistan. I include the Iraqis who sadly lost their lives serving next to us, but in the Queen’s uniform—they were dressed as we were—as interpreters. We owe them a duty of care, too. This covenant does not cover them—I understand that—but the generosity of Her Majesty’s armed forces and Her Majesty’s Government must include them. Only by doing so will we ensure that we get the best people to serve alongside us in our time of need. Those interpreters were not extras. They were not a luxury. They were not an add-on to our fighting capability; they were integral to it. Only by getting that right will we maintain the fundamental combat power that the British armed forces deploy on operations. It is absolutely right that we extend the covenant rights, as much as is possible and is reasonable, to those who have served alongside us.

[Mr Gray]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about the interpreters, and we are making some steps in the right direction there, but there are of course large numbers of other contractors of one sort or another, who in many cases serve right up at the frontline. To a greater or lesser degree they, too, should be covered by the terms of the military covenant.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I agree entirely with what he just said.

I want to bring in one other aspect: the fact that many, many young men and women from various other countries have served in Her Majesty’s uniform. Our recruitment system is blessed in having young men and women from all over the world who want to come and serve in our armed forces. My information may be out of date, but when I joined the armed forces, more men and women from the Republic of Ireland were serving in the British Army than were in the Republic’s army. Those young men and women, who serve in the Queen’s uniform, deserve as much protection as we can give them. Ireland is an independent state, and quite rightly so, but it is absolutely right that Her Majesty’s Government should recognise their service and, where appropriate, offer the same support through the covenant that British servicemen would enjoy anywhere else. The same is true of Nigeria, Nepal or South Africa. Young men and women have come from those countries, sometimes in great numbers, and served alongside us. I urge the Minister to look very closely at how, through the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development, Her Majesty’s Government can support communities that have sent young men and women to fight alongside ours.

Finally, I should say that the covenant is not always essential, because some of us have benefited disproportionately from our armed service. I have benefited massively from the camaraderie. I have benefited hugely from the education and the training. I have benefited completely from the moral ethos and the integrity that has, quite rightly, been rammed into us all. Military service is not a disadvantage. It is not a handicap. It is in no way something that should hold one back. It does not. In the vast majority of cases, military service empowers, enables and liberates people. It takes young men and women, often those who have been failed by the civilian services in our society, and gives them the leg up that they always needed, and a sense of discipline and purpose. The covenant is not a negative. It is not always about correcting a fault. It is about recognising where we can do that little bit more.

Trident

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara]

I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me if I do not accept for a moment her definition of incoherence. If that was incoherent, the actions of Germany, Spain and many other members of NATO are equally incoherent. I would point—

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Brendan O'Hara]

Please, let me finish the answer. I point out to the hon. Lady that the last two Secretaries-General of NATO have been Danish and Norwegian—countries that have exactly the same position that we advocate.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Woodcock]

On that point, though.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Brendan O'Hara]

No, I will make some progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins]

This is not a question of what my opinion is; it is a matter of simple fact that NATO is a nuclear alliance. Membership of NATO, which the SNP supports, requires allies to be members of the NATO nuclear alliance and to sit on the appropriate committees. So the fact is: an independent Scotland that was part of NATO would be covered by the nuclear umbrella. To be frank, I suspect that it is precisely because it would be covered in that way, with all the strength and security that that would offer, that it wants to be a member of NATO. That would give assurance to its own members. This is not a question of my opinion; it is a simple statement of fact.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Toby Perkins]

No, I am going to finish in a moment.

On the back of yesterday’s strategic defence and security review, the Government must clarify a number of the urgent issues that have been touched on already today. First, will they give us a breakdown of the new cost estimates for the Successor fleet that they have provided? Specifically, what are the latest figures for warhead and infrastructure refurbishment? Secondly, can the Minister confirm that the Treasury is to take the lead on the procurement of the Vanguard Successor class? If so, will he explain why? In setting out the mechanics of that arrangement, can he explain what it says about the level of confidence the Chancellor has in the Ministry of Defence? What input will Defence procurement experts have into the Treasury’s work on this? Was the decision made with the support of the Secretary of State for Defence, and if so, why did he think the matter would be better handled outside his own Department? Thirdly, will the Government clarify the timescales of the Successor programme? What criteria did they use to decide to further extend the life of the existing fleet? What is the strategy underpinning that decision? And, most importantly, can the Department resolutely guarantee that the decision will not adversely impact on the maintenance of our continuous at-sea deterrent posture?

I hope that the Minister for Defence Procurement will have an opportunity to respond to my questions. They are questions that he might reasonably have expected from the Members who called the debate, as they have had much longer to scrutinise the Government on this matter, but of course they are only interested in highlighting the difficulties that they perceive in the Labour party.

In summary, the Labour party’s review, under the stewardship of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood, will consider any new evidence. It will examine the views of people from across the spectrum of opinions. It will allow people across the party, in the trade union movement and in communities right across the land to engage in the debate. It will learn about the facts and debunk the myths, as part of a national conversation. We will not shrink from the debates; we will relish them. This is an issue on which we believe there needs to be more light and less heat. We will not play political games with an issue as important as this, but the House can be assured that when that review has been concluded, the Labour party will have a position that has been the subject of the widest public debate in the history of military decision making. People will be able to have real confidence that the position we reach is one that the party—and, indeed, the country—can support with confidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

This is an extremely important debate. Already this afternoon, we have heard some errant wrongs in the nature of our NATO alliance. I hope that Members will forgive me for taking a moment to correct them. NATO is a nuclear pact. NATO demands nuclear capability. NATO requires states to allow deployable nuclear weapons. It is simply incorrect to say that any member state can be a NATO member without tolerating, allowing, encouraging and even permitting the deployment of nuclear weapons from its states.

Germany has nuclear-capable artillery. Belgium has nuclear-capable aircraft. Denmark has runways for such aircraft and has subs basing for it in Danish waters. Every NATO state is nuclear-capable and allows the deployment and the firing of nuclear weapons from its territory. That is part of the 1949 alliance. If countries do not like it, they should not sign it; that is very, very clear.

NATO countries sign that alliance for a very good reason. It is because nuclear weapons work. Since 1949, no two nuclear states have fought each other or gone to war in any way. Why? Because nuclear weapons are appalling; they are utterly awful.

[James Cartlidge]

Does my hon. Friend agree with the many venerable academics who believe that, had it not been for nuclear weapons, it is almost certain that in the cold war period we would have had a third conventional world war, which would have been far more bloody and brutal than the first or even the second?

[Tom Tugendhat]

Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend very much for that intervention. The appalling nature of nuclear weapons is exactly what keeps us safe. The very fact that they are an existential threat to so many regimes and to so many dreadful leaders around the world is exactly what puts them off. Few bunkers and no society could survive a nuclear attack, and that is exactly why nuclear weapons work: nobody wishes to face them.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving a very powerful speech. Does he agree that NATO is about making a conventional or a nuclear attack on its members absolutely futile? In short, in the nuclear age, the enemy is war itself.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, in highlighting the fact that war is the real enemy, we need look only at the loss of life that we have seen from war this century. In the first and second world wars, we saw terrible destruction from conventional weapons. Ironically, those weapons were stopped by the two attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Though those attacks were utterly awful, and I will not in any way say that they were not, it is quite clear that what they did was prevent the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives—not just American lives, but Japanese lives too. Many prisoners of war, many of our relatives, survived the second world war—I am talking about the relatives of Members not just on the Government Benches but on the Opposition Benches too—because the horror of those two attacks brought an early end to that war, and thank God they did, because hundreds of thousands of lives were saved.

However, nuclear weapons do not work alone. They work as part of the spectrum of defence. They are part of everything from the infantry soldier with his bayonet right the way through to the Trident nuclear submarine. They work across the entire spectrum, because it is only the range that allows Her Majesty’s armed forces to intervene at an appropriate level on each occasion. In exactly the same way as a diplomat requires the military for his words to have credibility, so too the soldier requires the submarine to know that he will not be undermined by an attack from one of the other states that may sympathise with the enemy.

[John Glen]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful contribution. In his considerable experience working in the Ministry of Defence, has he ever seen a viable reorientation of defence expenditure away from the nuclear deterrent which would give us the same level of assurance around our defence?

[Tom Tugendhat]

Some work has been done on that, but only at a very basic level. The truth is that, when people rightly talk about the cost of defence and the cost of the nuclear deterrent, what they rarely consider is how much the conventional alternative costs. If we truly wish to deter and to persuade an enemy that we will not be steamrollered by their wish or blackmailed by their desires, we need to have a deterrent that allows us not to strike first, but to strike back. No conventional force offers the same pound-for-pound capability as the continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent. Members may not like it, but that is why the nuclear deterrent is the cheapest alternative.

[Carol Monaghan]

The deterrent is not working when Russian submarines in our waters are being spotted not by maritime patrol aircraft or vessels, but by fishing boats. We are now in the ridiculous situation where our deterrent is either to nuke them or to chase them away with bayonets.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Lady makes an entertaining but factually unsound point. Our capabilities are to chase them away with our hunter-killer submarines and the Royal Navy’s patrol vessels, and that is exactly what they are doing. Most important, when we see those Russian submarines coming towards us, we do not immediately think, “Let’s bow to Mr Putin’s latest desires and hobble ourselves to the Kremlin’s wishes.” Instead, we think, “They won’t dare, because they know we can.” That is what grants us the independence of action and guarantees us the independence of movement that we require as an active supporter of human rights and of the dignity of humanity in this world.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the ultimate proof that they are a deterrent is that although submarines may be circling the United Kingdom, they are not firing missiles?

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

Looking around the world, we might think that the real threat today is militant jihadism or a dirty bomb. That is, of course, true in the immediate sense, but I wonder how many Members on either side of the House would have looked around the world 20 years ago and said, “We’ve got to be worried about ISIS.”

[Danny Kinahan]

rose—

[Tom Tugendhat]

Forgive me, but I must make some progress. How many of us would have thought that, rather than being one our allies, as we very much hoped she would be in the 1990s, Russia would be resurgent after the cold war, changing the borders of a European country for the first time since 1945 and sponsoring militias in Ukraine that intend to bring death not only to the peacekeepers we send, but to civilian aircraft flying overhead? Who would have predicted that? I would wager that no one would have predicted it. Because of that inability to predict, it is essential that we in the United Kingdom guarantee the ultimate security for us and our children. It is not enough to wish for peace—we must work for it and fight for it, and the nuclear deterrent is the ultimate proof that we will both work and fight for our own security.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I should start by declaring an interest as a member of the Scottish CND.

Like the other members of the Public Accounts Committee, I have an advantage in approaching this debate, because we took evidence from the permanent under-secretary to the Ministry of Defence.

[Tom Tugendhat]

rose—

[Deidre Brock]

Please let me make a little progress.

We heard for ourselves the MOD’s misgivings about Trident and how it is unaffordable and threatens spending on other equipment.

The Prime Minister’s war drums are beating. He wants to open up another war front in Syria, to add to the current commitments of service personnel around the globe, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. While we have troops engaged abroad, the MOD was telling us that the inventory of support matériel for the armed forces has been cut by a quarter in the past four years, and that the funding is about to be slashed from £30 billion to less than £10 billion by keeping what was described as

“the minimum amount of kit”.

Spending on Trident, however, is to be protected and enhanced.

We were told that a huge gap of some £8.5 billion exists between what the generals, admirals and air chief marshals say the armed forces need and what Whitehall is prepared to provide. In the words of the permanent under-secretary,

“a process of going through what people want and saying, ‘I know you like that fantastic new thing. Actually, what you need is this’, will lower the bill.”

Whitehall bean-counters will be telling the armed forces what they really need, but spending on Trident will be sacrosanct. There will be no back-up body armour for troops on the battlefield, but there will be plenty of cash for Trident. Provision of troop transport options will be a matter for Whitehall, but the transport of weapons of mass destruction cannot be questioned.

We were told that the nuclear enterprise is what keeps the MOD’s senior civil servants awake at night. The permanent under-secretary said that the current annual running cost of Trident is

“in excess of £3.5 billion”,

but that if it is renewed the figure will rise to more than £5 billion a year. He said that he could drive savings in other areas,

“but that project is a monster and it is an incredibly complicated area in which to try to estimate future costs.”

Therefore, while Trident—an unusable and abhorrent abuse of scientific discovery and human imagination—can name its price and pick the pockets of any other budget in the MOD, other parts of the service are resourced or starved on a Whitehall whim.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I appreciate that the hon. Lady was in Australia at the time, acting in various episodes of “Home and Away”, but is she aware that during the 1970s the CND was largely funded by the KGB, as the Mitrokhin archive proves? Some of these arguments therefore sound a little hollow when they are made with the cash of our enemies.

[Deidre Brock]

That is a very amusing intervention, given that I am quoting the MOD’s so-called chief executive. The hon. Gentleman’s comments are not worthy of this place.

The air crews that the Prime Minister wants in the Syrian skies cannot be sure of a reliable supply of spare parts for their planes, but Trident will always have whatever it needs.

There is another insult in the midst of that mess, as the MOD outsources logistics and supply for armed forces to Leidos, an American firm that started out providing advice to the American defence nuclear industry. Those of us who campaigned in the independence referendum will recall being told that no vital pieces of defence infrastructure are provided by companies from outwith our borders. How things change and yet stay so much the same.

We might also want to take note of the legal position. My constituent Ronald King Murray—Lord Murray—who is a former Lord Advocate for Scotland and a respected legal thinker, has offered the opinion that nuclear weapons are illegal under international law. Given what the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) said about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I point out that Lord Murray was a serving soldier preparing to attack Japanese positions when the first atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima 70 years ago, and he thinks it may well have saved his life. However, he formed the opinion then, in spite of the preservation of his own life, that the weapon is probably illegal, and his opinion has not changed in the seven decades since.

Lord Murray suggests that the International Court of Justice might use the occasion of the case being brought by the Marshall Islands to update and enhance its 1996 ruling, which is that the use, or threatened use, of nuclear weapons was illegal. It may well decide now to rule that the possession of such weapons is illegal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

This is a matter of profound national importance. It is a debate on the security of our nation, but it is also about our standing as a nation among our allies and in the eyes of our adversaries. The history of our position as a nuclear power stems from our desire to protect ourselves and not to shy away from our responsibilities to our allies.

We must acknowledge the historically critical role that the Labour party has played in developing the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent. It is important to recognise too the Secretary of State’s call today for consensus on this matter, which I warmly welcome. It was the then Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, who in 1945 began the preliminary work and feasibility studies that paved the way for the independent nuclear deterrent. Following the end of nuclear co-operation with the United States in the shape of the McMahon Act in Congress, in October 1946 the Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernie Bevin, pushed ahead with plans for Britain to develop our own system.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to join him in praising Mr Attlee, indeed Major Attlee, who fought with enormous courage in the first world war? Does he not think that his former leader would have looked at the nuclear alliance and thought, as the Romans did, “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”—“If you seek peace, prepare for war”?

[Mr Reed]

I absolutely agree: Attlee invented the nuclear deterrent, so of course he would have agreed with that. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution to today’s debate, which I welcomed.

One reason the debate is so important to me is that my constituency and the neighbouring constituency of Barrow and Furness have always been at the heart of our independent deterrent, and that is a source of immense pride in Cumbria. Not only that, but I was elected, as were my colleagues, on a clear manifesto commitment that reads:

“Labour remains committed to a minimum, credible, independent nuclear capability, delivered through a Continuous At-Sea Deterrent”.

A number of colleagues have mentioned NATO. The principle of maintaining an independent deterrent is clearly demonstrated through our commitment to our NATO allies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

rose—

[Mr Reed]

Forgive me if I do not take any more interventions. I need to make progress.

The strategic concept continues:

“The supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies is provided by the strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance”,

including, crucially, the UK. Although that clearly demonstrates the treaty obligations that we must maintain with regard to our allies in NATO and our NATO membership, it espouses the single most fundamental principle underpinning the argument for maintaining an independent nuclear deterrent: while other nations have nuclear weapons, so should we. This is not about bravado, international one-upmanship or, as has bizarrely been said, a virility test. It is a clear demonstration of strength and capability which provides deterrence. Although the threat from other nation states has reduced over the past few decades, only the most naive would say that it has fully diminished. While there are nuclear weapons in the world, the only effective deterrent is maintaining our own independent nuclear weapons. Unilateralism will never work. Believe me, this party has tested that theory to destruction. Only a multinational approach can rid the world of nuclear missiles.

Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State recognise that the call for inaction, in the face of such evil as is being seen on the streets of Raqqa and other areas of northern Syria today, is to opt out of protecting our friends and allies? Having served alongside Jordanians, Lebanese and Iraqis in recent conflicts, may I urge him to redouble his efforts to support our friends and allies who require such assistance at times like this?

[Michael Fallon]

This is an allied effort, and we are certainly encouraging the other Gulf countries to do more, but we too face an enemy in ISIL and we too need to do more. That is why we are stepping up our training effort and taking on a huge burden in the intelligence and surveillance missions. It is also why, so far, we have conducted a very large number of strikes.

Britain and International Security

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We face a number of threats—that is obvious to everybody. We cannot choose between them. They are out there, and this year, because we are conducting our strategic defence and security review, which I will come to in a moment, we are able to look at them in the round. That is the answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s question.

As far as NATO’s immediate assurance measures are concerned, our Typhoons are protecting Baltic airspace and will be back next year to continue their mission for the third year running. Our warships have been patrolling the Baltic sea, and our ground troops have exercised this year alongside their counterparts in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania. We are also doubling spending on the training of Ukrainian forces to about £6 million and providing additional training tasks in medical evacuation, winter survival and reconnaissance skills. We have already trained about 650 members of the Ukrainian armed forces, and by this autumn we expect to have trained nearly 1,000. We have increased our contribution to NATO’s new very high readiness joint taskforce, and we will augment it with 1,000 troops each year into the next decade. At the same time, we have been playing a leading role in helping to address the migrant issue, with HMS Bulwark rescuing literally thousands from the Mediterranean.

We are not just tackling the symptoms of instability; we are working on its causes, too. We plan to deploy some 130 military personnel to Nigeria between now and the end of September. They will assist the new Government in a range of tasks, including training those Nigerian units deploying on counter-Boko Haram operations. That is a significant increase on the numbers previously deployed. We are continuing to mentor the next generation of Afghan army officers, and we are supporting the people of Sierra Leone in their struggle against the scourge of Ebola and bringing humanitarian help to those affected by the Nepalese earthquake.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has mentioned a number of operations on which I had the honour to serve. Although he is identifying military options for these problems, he will be more than aware that most of them do not really have a military solution. For example, in Nigeria, where we are helping against Boko Haram, the fundamental problem is the huge corruption in the Nigerian armed forces and the destructive element in the Nigerian Government. What can we possibly do with our Foreign Office colleagues to address the real problem rather than just the military fix?

[Michael Fallon]

I welcome my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour to his place in this House. He brings a wealth of experience from the armed forces and, indeed, the Ministry of Defence to debates such as this one. His question allows me to emphasise the importance of the work of other Departments. These cannot just be military solutions.

The work of the Department for International Development is extremely important and I have always seen development and defence as two sides of the same coin. The money we can spend up-front on capacity building helps to avoid a bigger financial outlay downstream. That money and the work by DFID and the Foreign Office can help prevent crises and conflicts. By strengthening countries in Africa, we can do more to discourage people from leaving them, and because today’s aid budget is much better focused, with fewer countries receiving it, it has greater impact.

We are spending some £60 million on supporting millions of people who have been displaced by ISIL/Daesh, and we have pledged £900 million to answer the specific humanitarian crisis in Syria—the biggest ever UK response to any crisis anywhere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who has, as always, made a thought-provoking speech.

The events at Calais, and the events—as tragic as they are horrifying—on a holiday beach in Tunisia, have brought home something that was perhaps obvious but that we have overlooked for too long. It is a fact that this country sits in a continent separated from some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people by what is effectively an inland sea capable of being crossed in less than a day. That passage is made by thousands every day. The majority of them are of course seeking a better life, but it can safely be inferred that some are coming to Europe, and attempting to make their way to the United Kingdom, in order to harm us and our democratic way of life. I spoke about that in the debate on the Adjournment last night, and it is a problem that will not go away unless and until we deal with its root causes and direct a focus, which has hitherto been lacking, on the problems that are being experienced particularly in Africa and particularly in relation to corruption. Those problems are leading to much of the difficulty that we now find ourselves in.

The first duty of a Government is, and must always be, to ensure the security and safety of their own people. I know that this Government are well aware of that; it is in part why we make the case—not always popular in the country—that we should spend 0.7% of gross national income on international aid, which is one of the greatest tools of soft power we enjoy. That is not only the right thing to do; it is critical to our own national security. We have been through some tough times, and that is perhaps what has led the Washington Post and the federal Government in Washington to the view that Britain has not walked as tall on the international stage over the past few years as it has done in the past. I venture to suggest to those on the Government Front Bench that it is time to change that view.

We need to ensure that whatever proportion of our national income we spend on defence, we continue to have strong armed forces that are capable of projecting British power across the world. We need that not merely to ensure some form of national aggrandisement, but because what we do overseas matters—it matters to our own security at home. The threat we face from Islamic terrorism in particular means that we have no option but to think long and hard about how we use both our hard and soft power internationally to deal with an ever-increasing menace.

Although many colleagues have focused their remarks on a wide range of subjects, particularly on the middle east, the base of Daesh and al-Qaeda, I wish to focus my remarks on Boko Haram and its operations in northern Nigeria and the surrounding region. What began as a radical political movement in 2002 has essentially become a violent Jihadist insurgency that has killed and abducted thousands, and caused many more to flee their homes in fear.

Boko Haram’s ambition to carve out a caliphate in the region, its links to al-Qaeda and its bloodthirsty violence bear similarities to Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Its exporting of Jihad across post-colonial borders is destabilising the region, just as Daesh is destabilising the middle east. But we cannot, and I know that Ministers will not, forget or ignore the threat of Boko Haram not just to the region but to our own security. The task is far from easy, as I recognise. Boko Haram has seldom shown much regard for national boundaries. It readily retreats across them when threatened, and it crosses into neighbouring states to recruit and train disaffected young men, as indeed has recently been the case in Niger. Its focus has changed recently from the north of Nigeria to a much larger area—perhaps in an attempt to replicate the Kanem-Bornu empire that once spanned parts of northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon under the Muslim Sayfawa dynasty. We have seen increasing numbers of incidents on Cameroonian soil in particular, especially kidnappings and village attacks, none of which, it must be said, has attracted much coverage in the media here and still less any debate in this House. The United Nations rightly remains concerned. The Secretary-General has said that he is deeply troubled by Boko Haram’s

“continuing indiscriminate and horrific attacks”.

The world seems largely to have forgotten the girls who were kidnapped overnight on 14 and 15 April 2014, but the truth is that Boko Haram has been kidnapping girls from northern Nigeria for years, often for sale as slaves. Although the Nigerian people and the international community were rightly horrified by the scale of the mass kidnap of more than 200 girls from the town of Chibok, such kidnappings have continued to this day and very little is being done to stop them. The horrifying nature of these kidnappings underscores the horrific nature of the menace with which we have to deal, because it does threaten us here in this country.

The displacement of people from the immediately affected area in which Boko Haram is operating is also causing refugee crises all over the region, as terrified people flee further and further away to get out of the reach of the violence, even to the Maghreb from where they attempt to make their way to Europe.

[Tom Tugendhat]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Has the hon. Gentleman been here for the debate?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I have been part of the main debate from the beginning.

Does my hon. and learned Friend recognise that it is the governance problem in Nigeria that is causing the rise of Boko Haram? The rise of so many of these insurgent movements has rather more to do with governance and diplomatic problems than military ones.

[Stephen Phillips]

I recognise that, and I am coming on to it, although it is always difficult to condense—