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Defence in the United Kingdom

I rise to speak today with somewhat mixed feelings. On 6 December, at my own request, I shall return to the Back Benches, and this, therefore, is my last speech from the Dispatch Box, and my last speech as shadow Secretary of State for Defence. I was grateful to the Secretary of State for the remarks that he made on Monday, and I reciprocate them. I regard him as a man who has a real affection for our armed forces, and who, so far as he is allowed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has their interests at heart. I have always found him an honourable Minister to deal with, in his many roles, and an agreeable companion beyond the boundaries of party politics. We have occasionally sung in harmony together—and I mean that genuinely, both of us being folk singers from our misspent youth. Having thus destroyed any lingering leadership ambitions that the Secretary of State may secretly have nurtured, I turn next to the Minister of State. Never a man to duck a fight, as we have seen again today, honed as I was in the heat of pre-devolution Scottish politics and on the fires of conflict in Northern Ireland, he is an opponent for whom I have always had the utmost respect. I welcome this debate on defence in the United Kingdom. Since the end of the cold war, the concept of defence of the realm has changed. From being reactive, in the light of evolving threats it has now had to become proactive. Alongside deterrence, there is now an increased need for pre-emption, or what the United Nations Commission called prevention. That is why, for instance, military action in Afghanistan in 2001 was prosecuted under the self-defence article, article 51, of the United Nations charter. We can no longer regard defence in Britain as being solely restricted within the boundaries of Britain. I join the Minister of State in the praise that he has just given to the emergency services and the way that they operated after the terrorist outrages of 7 July. But those terrorist outrages and their connection to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism underlined the way in which homeland security and events overseas are now inextricably linked. The balance, therefore, between the maintenance of defence resources within the United Kingdom and their deployment outside the United Kingdom is a crucial and difficult one to strike. The common denominator between them is the need for sufficient manpower and adequate equipment, and that should be a crucial element of today’s debate. We start the debate with a degree of harmony. We both pay tribute to our armed forces; we both acknowledge our debt to them for the dedicated courage with which they carry out their duties. I am unashamedly proud of our armed forces, whose commitment and professionalism are second to none. But we owe them more than just our words of thanks and praise. We owe them effective support, and I should have thought that that was common between us. Sadly, I cannot think that it is. In my last Front-Bench defence speech I intend to be frank. I simply did not recognise our armed forces from the description given today by the right hon. Gentleman. I have never in over 30 years in politics known our armed forces to be under such pressure, to be so unsighted as to the Government’s purpose and direction, to feel so unappreciated and devalued, and to be under such constant threat of cuts. Since 1997, the armed forces have seen the level of their commitments rise, but not their resources. In simple terms, since 1997 they have been asked by the Government to do more and more with less and less. There have been five major operations in eight years—Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq—all prosecuted brilliantly by our forces, but the resources available to those forces have been diminishing.