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Armed Forces Personnel

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton) started her remarks modestly by being self-deprecating about her knowledge of defence, which she belied by the depth of knowledge and detail in her speech. Hon. Members will have been astonished to hear that someone so young could possibly be married to someone who did national service. I am glad that the cavalry arrived in time to hear the best part of her speech. As always happens on these occasions, today’s debate consists of three main strands. First, all hon. Members—this is probably true of all hon. Members throughout history—have been unanimous in paying tribute to the courage, professionalism, discipline and dedication of our armed services, both in times of peace and in times of war, which is the case at the moment in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The job that they do is not a job that many of us sitting in this air-conditioned Chamber would willingly do, although some of us sometimes pretend otherwise, and we pay tribute to all that they do and to the support provided by their families. That is an enormously important strand in this annual personnel debate. The second strand that recurs in these debates concerns the kit and equipment with which our armed forces are sent to war. There are always discussions about whether there is enough body armour, whether there are enough bullets, and whether the equipment could be improved in one way or another. For my part, I am proud that 9 Supply Regiment, the Royal Logistics Corps is based in my constituency; it does an outstanding job of ensuring that equipment gets to troops on the front line. However, improvements could be made in the computer systems that enable it to get that equipment through to the boys on the front line. During Telic 1, for example, a significant amount of equipment, particularly body armour, was stored at Umm Qasr but should have been issued. Nevertheless, we should be proud of the fact that the British armed services have the highest standards of equipment issued to any armed services anywhere in the world. Of course, it could always be improved or used more effectively. It is also true that soldiers will always go out and purchase their own equipment. Before any deployment or operation, the boys will go out and buy their own stuff, but that is not to say that the stuff that they have is not first class. It is worth paying tribute to the quality of the equipment supplied to them. I have particular concerns about the foam flame retardant that is being fitted to the wing tanks of the Hercules fleet. Having heard in this House only last week that the first plane will be completed by August, I understand that that has slipped at least to September and possibly to October. I do not want the Minister to give away any secrets that would help our enemy, but I hope that he will take on board the fact that the community around Lyneham in my constituency is desperately keen that that retardant should be fitted as soon as possible. Leaving aside such details, broadly speaking the equipment with which our troops go to war is first class. The third strand—the one that has most preoccupied us and is perhaps the most important at a time like this—is the question of whether the things that we are asking our armed services to do are matched by the numbers of people and the quality of the equipment that they are given to do them with. In that context, I am glad that this debate follows our debate on defence policy a couple of Thursdays ago. What are our armed services for? Are we always going to support the United States in everything that it does? Are we to go around the world as a kind of world police force? Are we engaged in home defence and crisis management on our own shores? We have a whole variety of roles in the Balkans, the Falklands, Northern Ireland and Germany—the list goes on and on. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) said, we are being asked to do more and more. There seems to be a global strategic mission creep. The Government are very free about saying that we will do these things—““We must do something about it: let’s send some troops””—but less free with the supply of people to do them.