British Armed Forces: Size and Strength

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Leo Docherty]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is our duty to make it clear to the Treasury that there is a large cohort of Members of Parliament who are absolutely determined to ensure that the Ministry of Defence has a sound financial settlement and is properly resourced.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in articulating his argument, it is important to stress that he has the support of all Members?

[Leo Docherty]

I absolutely acknowledge that. Defence is not really a party political issue; it is an issue of national security, and I am heartened by the fact that Members from all parts of the House are here engaging in this debate.

The second set of problems with the plan laid out in SDSR 2015 relates to timing. As the name implies, joint force 2025 is some years away. We have a capability gap, and delivering that capability is some years off. It is also important to remember that this is not the generation of a new capability. The force laid out in SDSR 2015 is essentially making up for ground lost in 2010, when the MOD suffered a 8% reduction in budget and our fighting power was reduced by about 25%. We have to put things in context: having a deployable war-fighting division as laid out in SDSR 2015 is nothing new. We deployed a division of 45,000 soldiers to Iraq in 2003 and a division of 53,000 men in Operation Granby at the Gulf war in 1991. We are essentially making up for ground that we lost in 2010, and it is important to bear that in mind. It is also important to bear in mind that with joint force 2025, there is not much fat in the system—it is quite a bare-bones approach.

We have to reconcile ourselves to the situation we find ourselves in today, and I would be interested in the Minister’s comments. My judgment is that we cannot credibly claim to be able to deploy a war-fighting division within six months. That is some years off. We also lack the air defence that is particularly important to protect our enhanced force presence in Estonia. The Minister will perhaps mention that.

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[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) on securing the debate and on the way he presented his arguments. I also thank Members on both sides of the Chamber for contributing to the debate, which, by and large, has been consensual. I think there is a unity of purpose among the Members who expressed their views.

Our starting point has to be the personnel deficits of 3.5% in the Royal Navy, 6.3% in the Army and 5.8% in the Royal Air Force. That must be a cause for concern for us all. There are problems with recruitment, as the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) said—I share his views about Capita entirely—and there is concern about retention in the armed forces. We all know about the problems with accommodation and pay. Those concerns must be addressed.

We are also worried about the gaping black hole of between £20 billion and £30 billion in the Ministry of Defence budget over the next decade. We all know why that has happened: there has been a lack of coherent management in the MOD and we have bought a huge amount off the shelf from the United States of America while the pound has depreciated. We all know, too, that it is completely unrealistic for the MOD to call for yet more efficiency savings that cannot be achieved. That is all happening at a time when this country is increasingly under threat from terrorism and, as the Chief of the General Staff said in his speech at the Royal United Services Institute last week, from an assertive Russia.

There is a widespread view that defence expenditure must therefore increase. Many peers in the other place have expressed that view, and it has been forcefully expressed by the military. Earlier this week, the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), called for our military expenditure to increase by £7.7 billion to 2.5% of GDP. He issued a chilling warning:

“Our security is at stake.”

My view is that defence expenditure should be increased to at least the level achieved by the last Labour Government, yet we are seeing more and more cuts. Earlier this month, it was leaked that the MOD is considering three options. The first involves a personnel cut of 14,250. Under that option, marines would be cut by about 2,000 and the RAF would lose 1,250 personnel. Fifty-nine cap badges would be lost. There would be cuts to the Navy, to the Air Force and to the equipment of the Army. The other two options are no better.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

Those figures may well be true, but the hon. Gentleman has to deal with the fact that, regularly, 50% of Army personnel leave before they reach the age of 30. How does he propose to deal with that problem?

[Wayne David]

A whole host of measures need to be put in place. Recruitment is an important issue, but so is retention. Pay, accommodation, respect for the armed forces and people’s prospects after they leave all have a material bearing on retention. The right hon. Gentleman is correct to raise that point.

The Defence Secretary said that the proposed cuts are unacceptable, and he is correct. As we know, he is having a battle with the Treasury for money, and Labour will be firmly on his side in that battle. We are also aware that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ellwood) has threatened to resign if these cuts are imposed. I support and respect that. If the Minister decides to issue a similar statement, we would support that as well.

Finally, we were led to believe that there would be a separation of the cyber capability and defence aspects of the national security and capability review, and that the Defence Secretary would make an announcement on that today. We have since been told that that will not happen. Will the Minister say when that statement will be made to the House, because it is of tremendous importance? When it was established, the national security and capability review was to be conducted on the basis of fiscal neutrality. The suspicion, therefore, is that moneys could be taken from Peter, the defence budget, to pay Paul, the cyber capability budget, which is totally unacceptable. We believe that there should be an increase in capabilities all round. This has been a good debate in both content and tone, and I hope that the Ministry of Defence will stand firm in its battle with the Treasury. If it fights for extra resources, the Opposition will be on its side, together with many Conservative Back Benchers and Members across the House.

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

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and I declare an interest as a serving member of the Army Reserve. I confirm that I have no intention of resigning from the Army Reserve, as that would not help numbers at all.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) on securing this important and timely debate. It follows a number of other debates on similar themes in recent months in Westminster Hall, the main Chamber, and another place. The Government welcome every opportunity to emphasise their strong commitment to the armed forces and the defence of our country, and I am pleased to do that again today.

I also thank my hon. Friend for his insightful observations. As a former officer in the British Army with many years of distinguished service, including in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has brought a wealth of knowledge and personal experience to the Chamber this morning. Other right hon. and hon. Members have also made contributions, and it is a privilege to respond to a debate of such quality. We have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), and the hon. Members for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis)—I was particularly impressed by that speech and will return to it—for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) and for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes).

I also enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), but may I gently say that, in my limited experience after 12 years in this House, this is supposed to be a debate? I was simply going to make a helpful comment, which I will return to, and the House tends to appreciate it if we can have a debate, rather than Members simply standing up and having a bit of a rant. I admire his passion for the subject, but Members get a bit more respect in this place when they are prepared to have a debate. I am gently chiding him.

This debate has been about the size and strength of our armed forces, so in a major sense it is about our people. I therefore pay tribute to the many tens of thousands of servicemen and women whose selfless service keeps our country and people safe. We must do everything we can to persuade our young people that the armed forces remain a great place to work with many development opportunities, both professional and personal. We accept, however, that recruitment remains a challenge—that point was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex.

Record youth employment and a diminishing number of 16 to 24-year-olds entering the workforce over the next few years means that there will always be strong competition for new people. We are responding with a range of short and long-term initiatives to ensure that the offer of a career in the armed forces remains competitive. The services are recruiting though active and targeted campaigns, and increasing engagement and activity in communities where recruitment has been low. We are also working on recruiting and retaining specialist skills. There are some encouraging signs. The number of applications to join the Navy and the Army has increased compared with the same point last year, and outflow from the regular armed forces in the past 12 months has reduced. The reserves are a success and continue to increase in number.

British society is changing, and young infantry soldiers who come from our traditional recruiting grounds in the north-east and north-west now represent a much smaller proportion of our society. That is why we have set ourselves challenging targets to recruit from the black, Asian and minority ethnic community, and to get a better gender balance in the armed forces. There are signs that we are beginning to make progress in those areas, but it is difficult, not least because we must ensure that the right role models in our armed forces can inspire other people to join.

Being a bottom-fed organisation, it is sometimes difficult to get those role models in the right place at the right rank. Hopefully, the Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill, which is proceeding through the House, will give us greater latitude in how we bring people into the armed forces, and potentially allow people to take career breaks, or—perhaps at an important point of their career—to work part-time or job share. No one suggests that that will be a silver bullet that will solve the problems, but hopefully it will make serving in the armed forces a little more compatible with the challenging pattern of modern life. I am pleased that in general there has been support for the Bill.

[Wayne David]

On recruitment, does the Minister accept that the approach of Capita leaves a lot to be desired? Will the MOD look carefully and critically at how it is fulfilling its contract?

[Mark Lancaster]

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point. There have clearly been challenges, and to suggest otherwise would be entirely wrong. I am particularly interested in recruitment, and I think that this package of measures will be the right thing. I firmly take on board what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, and we should try to move toward a blend of measures. I would not want to tie up enormous numbers of members of the armed forces solely in recruiting, but there is an important place for young role models who can inspire young people to join. Many of the back-room functions of the process can be done through Capita and others. We need a balance, and I am not sure that we have quite got that right at the moment.

Let me return to the theme of size and strength. It seems to be a day for Communist quotes, because I think it was Stalin who said:

“Quantity has a quality all of its own”,

which is a reasonable point. The worth of an armed force is ultimately determined by what it can do: the military power it can bring to bear, the readiness with which it can respond, and the effects it can achieve in the different circumstances in which it may be asked to achieve them.

The hon. Member for Barnsley Central will expect me to say that new technology and new capabilities tend to reduce the service requirement for manpower overall, but I do not for one second say that that justifies a continued reduction in the size of the armed forces. It does not, but there is a balance to be found between embracing those new technologies and maintaining that Stalinist thought about quantity having a quality of its own.

Although fully trained, regular service personnel will continue to make up the majority of the military workforce, particular requirements can be met equally well by reserve forces, including the sponsored reserve. Our aim must be to make the best use of all the talent and ability that the country has to offer, including from those who can bring to the armed forces valuable skills acquired in civilian life. I have already mentioned the more flexible approach to military workforce planning—what we called the “total armed force”—which we are looking at along with the service chiefs. I hope to update the House on exactly what that means and how we intend to move this forward. It is an attempt to embrace all the talent we can find.

We often talk about the number in the armed forces as if, magically, the whole force could be deployed in the field tomorrow. It cannot: no military can deploy its entire force in the field in one day. The true strength of an armed force is a combination of its total manpower—be that regular, reserve, or regular reserve—and the readiness with which it can be deployed.

Historically, we have deployed divisions; we should be fiercely proud of that, as few countries can deploy a division—the first size of armed force that has the full orchestra, so to speak, of capabilities to be deployed—but a division cannot be deployed tomorrow. It takes time; there is a readiness cycle for its deployment in the field. However, I am confident about answering the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot about our having a deployable division at readiness. We hold different forces at different periods of readiness, on a graduated scale. It would be wrong to go into detail about exactly what is held at what level of readiness, what is quickly deployable and what larger forces can be deployed over a period.

We often talk about threat. In my basic military training, threat had two components: capability and intent. A true threat exists when someone has capability and intends to use it. To go back to the speech of the hon. Member for Barnsley Central, there is an argument that the biggest threat we face now, based on capability and intent, is probably in cyberspace. There are threats to the nation every day there. However, that is not to dismiss other threats such as the Russian threat, clearly articulated this week by the Chief of the General Staff. In that case, there is definitely capability, but at the moment probably no intent to use it. However, I am very mindful that capabilities can take a long time to build up, while intents can change relatively quickly. We need to be mindful of and careful about that.

The national security capability review was touched on, and Members are no doubt aware that the National Security Council sat yesterday and that the NSCR was on the agenda. It was agreed that an NSCR report would be published in late spring 2018. More importantly for the purposes of this debate, the result of the NSC meeting was that a further separate programme of work to modernise defence will now happen. That will be called the modernising defence programme.

The Defence Secretary will make a statement. It will not be today; there is a negotiation by the usual channels. I assure right hon. and hon. Members that they should not read anything into that. The right date is being sought to maximise attendance. Let us be honest: probably the last thing we want is a statement when most people have plans to go home or be elsewhere. The statement will happen soon, on a day—Members can guess which day—of maximum attendance in the House, for maximum scrutiny of the Defence Secretary. I offer my apologies that it is not today, but ask Members please not to read anything into that.

[Wayne David]

I thank the Minister; but can we have an assurance that the statement will not be made in the evening?

[Mark Lancaster]

That was one of the issues, to be fair. There is a genuine feeling that on a matter of such importance the statement should be made at the right time on the right day, when there will be maximum opportunity for hon. Members to quiz the Secretary of State; but nothing should be read into the timing. The hon. Gentleman has alluded to one of the potential problems, and that is the nature of business today.

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[Mark Lancaster]

It is not for me to offer a lesson in the development of grand strategy, but in my training it was always all about ends, ways and means. We are attempting to establish the ends: what are we seeking to do? Clearly we seek to counter the threats that the UK faces. As to means, effectively people always focus on the capabilities that we have. That has been one of the challenges that we have faced in the wider debate, where individual capabilities have been plucked out that hon. Members feel must be saved at all costs, without their necessarily looking at the wider context of how the means and capabilities fit together. Equally, part of the capability is the finance—the ability to buy it. Means therefore include both physical capability and money. Ways are how we use those means. The piece of work in question will grow on the NSCR, and as it continues, clearly, if factors emerge and investment in certain capabilities is needed, that will be a negotiation with the Treasury.

[Wayne David]

Does not what the Minister said imply that his answer is yes, it will be fiscally neutral?

[Mark Lancaster]

That is not what I am saying at all. To be fair to my boss, the Secretary of State, he has made a strong case for greater investment in defence; and that negotiation will continue. However, before I get into lots of trouble by pre-empting what he will say in the statement shortly, I ask right hon. and hon. Members to indulge me with their patience. They will have the opportunity to ask all those questions shortly, during the statement.