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Defence in the World

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to take part in this important and—at least until now—interesting debate. We have heard a number of far-ranging speeches. I particularly welcomed the contribution by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I pay tribute to him and the work that his team is doing in securing defence in the world for this country. I was also pleasantly surprised by the contribution of the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox). He made a good and balanced speech. Hon. Members will not be surprised to hear that I did not agree with all of it. I certainly did not agree with his comments on NATO and the Riga summit. I attended Riga and my impression was quite the opposite. The commitment given by our United States allies in particular and all our European allies to the future of NATO was strong and welcome. Although they did not extend the remit or future goals of NATO, they made one thing clear: our success or failure in Afghanistan will determine the future success of NATO and its role in this country’s defence. I welcome that. Similarly, I did not agree with some of the hon. Gentleman’s threat scenarios, but he was right when he said that we should keep all our options open when we consider the security of this country in an ever-changing world. It is not simply a case of the very new threats, which are real and great, but the need not to take our eye off the ball afterwards. I was concerned to read, as everyone else did, that the Chinese succeeded in taking out a disused weather satellite with what I understood to be an intercontinental ballistic missile. I cannot speak for anyone else, but it sent a shiver down my spine because it enhanced the strategic threat that China poses to the world when we have always considered it to pose a tactical regional threat. The traditional dangers are always out there. Clearly, the biggest threat we face—this is why we are fighting on two fronts, with two sustained conflicts, in Iraq and Afghanistan—is the direct strategic threat to this country from international terrorism. We have no option but to tackle that problem at source. Again, the hon. Gentleman was right to say that we should start looking afresh at our defence strategy. Indeed, the Prime Minister recently said that we should have a new debate on defence, and I agree. The hon. Gentleman was generous in pointing out that the Government’s strategic defence review was a welcome document. It was foreign policy-led and identified some of the threats that we faced in the future and some of the things that we needed to do to address them. We then had the new chapter, following the 9/11 attacks, which added to the SDR, and the White Paper, which set out our capabilities for the future. It is my belief that there has been a paradigm shift in the nature of the threat away from what we historically looked at to the new invidious and horrendous threats from an enemy that places no limit on the weapons it is prepared to use; nor does it place any limit on the number or type of people, including non-combatants, that it is prepared to kill. It is also prepared to die in the process. That is an unprecedented and qualitatively new threat. We should look at our defence policy in relation to it. Perhaps we should consider a new covenant with the armed forces, arising from that threat, setting out what we expect them to do now that we did not expect them to do in 1997, when the scope of the SDR was first drawn up. Most members of our armed forces—who do a magnificent job every time and wherever they are deployed—did not join the forces to fight on a regular basis; they joined the forces to prepare to fight, as and when it was needed. The vast majority of service men and women did not actually fight between 1945 and the present day, but that is now changing. A large proportion of our service personnel are not only expected to fight but end up fighting, not just once but again and again in the most difficult circumstances, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan but in west Africa, the Balkans and all over the world. That is a new arrangement, and we must recognise the commitment that our soldiers are now making.