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Defence in the UK

Damn it, I really should know better than to give way to the hon. Lady, as she has said exactly what I was going to say next. She is absolutely right: we will win people’s hearts and minds by promoting their hopes and aspirations, not by inspiring fear and saying what is going wrong. She is completely right to say that we have to be for our beliefs and values and against those who try to undermine their own security, but that we have to act in a way that appeals to people’s minds and hearts. My suspicion, however, is not that we failed to articulate our plan but rather that we do not have one. That suspicion is fed by the fact that the Foreign Secretary has told us so. On 13 January, she and the Defence Secretary came before a joint meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committees. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) asked the Foreign Secretary whether she had"““a coherent, long-term global plan with our allies in how we are going to deal with this?—" the terrorist threat—"““over the next five, ten, 20, 50 years??" The Foreign Secretary replied:"““This is certainly an issue which is much discussed…the answer to that question will certainly be no but there is a very widespread, very strongly shared concern and people are looking to see what can be done?." The right hon. Lady said more in the same vein, but the truth is that we really need a plan. The Government must show that they understand that the rise of fundamentalism in UK communities, as well as people’s sense of isolation, distance and lack of integration, are intimately connected with the difficulties and dangers faced by our troops in the middle east and with terrorism everywhere. I turn now to how we look after our service personnel. As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton said, we are about to conduct two inquiries. One will be into Defence Estates, the agency that administers the MOD’s physical estate, and the other will be into medical care for the armed forces. At this juncture, and with all due diffidence, I should like to pay particular tribute to the Defence Committee itself. It does a lot of extremely valuable work thanks to its members’ assiduity and hard work, and they are brilliantly and ably supported by the Committee’s Clerks and advisers. A great deal of hard work goes into the inquiries that we conduct and I hope that the House will agree that it is generally to reasonably good effect. As I said, the Defence Committee is conducting an inquiry into Defence Estates. The agency has a broad range of responsibilities, one of the most important of which is the provision of housing for service personnel and their families. The quality of service housing has received much media attention. It is very variable. When the Committee visited Cyprus last November, we were shown some quite exemplary single living accommodation, but we also spoke to soldiers who were dreading being deployed to Hounslow because of its reputation for having some of the worst barracks in the Army. The MOD has a duty to provide decent living accommodation for service personnel, but it is clear that the quality of accommodation affects both retention and morale. That is why we shall be looking into the matter very soon. For exactly the same reasons, the Committee will be looking into the medical care that our armed services receive. That has been dealt with in depth and with far greater expertise than I could hope to summon by my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox). He was absolutely right to concentrate on some of mental health issues that challenge injured personnel, as well as on the physical issues. The Committee is not sure about the state of the interface between Defence Medical Services and the NHS and about what happens when people are discharged from the armed forces. We are not sure whether that is being properly handled, so we shall be looking into the matter. It is essential that those who fight on behalf of our country and are injured and often suffer dreadfully should receive the very best of care. In everything we say, we need to bear in mind the extraordinarily valuable contribution made by places such as Selly Oak hospital. There are media stories attacking the hospital, but there are also stories about the high-quality treatment given there. The Committee will do its best to get to the bottom of how such contradictions arise. Finally, I want to touch on research and development. The Committee produced a report in February on the work of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. We noted that UK spending on defence-related research and development is about a tenth of US spending and that the gap is widening. The defence industrial strategy showed clearly that what we spend on defence research now will have a precise and definite bearing on our defence capabilities in 20 or 25 years’ time. Our deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq focus research and development on short-term operational requirements, which may be to the detriment of longer term research. We have to ensure that does not happen. Although the Committee accepted that the Government’s defence industrial strategy sought greater investment in defence research from industry, we felt strongly that increased Government investment was also necessary to maintain the UK’s position compared with its competitors. We expressed concern about the possible impact of the shortage of science graduates, although DSTL told us that that was not a problem. Nevertheless, we felt that although the shortage of graduates might not yet be a problem for DSTL, it could be in the future. If there are fewer science graduates, or if they are tempted to go to other countries, that could pose a problem for us in the long term. A couple of evenings ago, some colleagues and I were fortunate enough to be entertained by QinetiQ, the extraordinarily valuable and exceptionally good company that employs large numbers of my constituents. A number of interesting points were made at the dinner, but I shall refer to only two of them. In the commercial world, what is in the shops today was on the computer design screen less than a year ago. We desperately need to be able to match that speed to market—or, in the MOD procurement world, speed to front line. The second point arises from the first. There is an aversion to risk taking in the civil service. There is no system for rewarding civil servants who take risks. In fact, it is quite the reverse of a reward system, because what happens is that they get hauled before the Defence Committee or the Public Accounts Committee. I believe that there is a need to encourage civil servants to take properly assessed and properly evaluated risks in the interests of getting equipment into service before it becomes obsolete.