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Defence Policy

I understand and sympathise with the importance of the hon. Gentleman’s question, but if we get into the hypothetical debate of ruling things in or out at a time when we are involved in high-level, delicate negotiations with Iran, the only people we are likely to give comfort to are the Iranian regime. It has to be made clear that we do not want Iran to become a nuclear-weapon state. Iran is, indeed, signed up to the non-proliferation treaty, in which it pledges not to become a nuclear weapon state. The international community is taking the correct approach at the present time, and to rule anything out would be to weaken our hand in negotiations. I do not think that we should be any more specific than that. I visited Iran a few weeks ago, and having been there and discussed the matter with Iranian politicians, I understood just how complex those negotiations can be and how difficult it can be to get across to some Iranian politicians that this is a quarrel not with the United States or the United Kingdom, but with the whole international community. The better that that community is able to speak with one voice—not splinter into what-ifs—the better our chance of getting a properly negotiated settlement in Iran that is to everyone’s benefit. In the environment we currently face, one thing stands out above all else. In a truly global, interdependent economy, we have a far greater risk of exposure than in the past. Indeed, it has been said that today’s multi-polar world resembles the second half of the 19th century much more than it did at any time during the cold war years. That means we have to get the structures right. Our global economy is using political structures designed for the environment after the second world war, and military structures largely designed for the cold war. The structure we need to get right the most is NATO; the Secretary of State touched on it in his speech. It has to be made clear to all NATO members that those who benefit from collective security are morally bound to a collective effort. Being part of NATO does not mean becoming involved in the conflicts or type of warfare that we like, and not the ones that we do not. There is a duty on all of those in the alliance to play a fair role, which means we have to bring an end to the fighting-funding link. People in this country already think it wrong that we in the UK play a disproportionate role in the military burden, along with the Americans and Canadians in the south of Afghanistan. The way in which NATO is funded means that we also carry a disproportionate level of the financial burden. The breaking of the fighting-funding link is necessary if NATO is to prosper and survive in what will be a threatening world. The bottom line is this: the Government issued an extremely competent and widely supported strategic defence review, from which flowed several planning assumptions, yet they have exceeded them in all of the past six years. Our manpower has reduced but our commitments have increased. Defence has fallen as a proportion of GDP and of the Government’s overall expenditure, and the major procurement projects, which are widely supported by hon. Members of all parties—the carriers, the future rapid effect system and the joint strike fighter—are likely, without a change in the budgetary settlement, to mean cuts in other parts of the core budget. Our personnel exceed too widely the harmony guidelines and retention is a growing problem. Ten years into office, it is not a happy story for the Government to sell to the British public. It reflects badly on the Labour party and its priorities, but—worse—it badly lets down our armed forces. That is the real shame.