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Defence Policy

No, let me first outline what I am going to say. If the Opposition want to demonstrate that they are capable, they must show that they are different from the Conservative party that I have observed in my 34 years as a Member of Parliament, mostly in opposition. If one cannot get much from the future—from what might happen, according to the Opposition’s proposals—one is forced to revert to the past. The Opposition’s past is even more dispiriting than their proposals for the future. One gains the impression from listening to the hon. Member for Woodspring that the Conservative party is the SAS of Opposition defence teams, confident in its abilities and its history. One would also believe that the Government were somehow the descendants of a semi-pacifist or pacifist Labour party led by Michael Foot, Tony Benn, Frank Allaun and Ramsay MacDonald, who ended up as a Conservative. Neither of those extremes is true. The Government have been accused of all sorts of things, such as cutting defence expenditure. If the Opposition want to talk about cuts, they should consider the template under the Thatcher and Major Governments. Most of the increase in Government expenditure went on replacing kit lost during the war against Argentina. The previous Labour Government—Fred Mulley was Secretary of State—promised that we would commit ourselves to a 3 per cent. real increase in defence expenditure. Labour did that—the cut came under Michael Heseltine. If one looks at the chart of defence expenditure and what the Library has produced—I do not want to embroil the Library research department in a political argument—one sees that the statistics are clear. The picture of Tory defence expenditure, following a little spurt after the Falklands war, is: drop, drop, drop, drop, drop until the Defence Committee, then led by a wonderful Conservative Chairman, the late Michael Colvin, argued that Government expenditure was projected to fall to 2.2 per cent. Therefore, before too many rocks are thrown about any failings, I hope that the shadow Secretary of State will look at the many Defence Committee reports that were published during his party’s period in office. Charges have been laid against the Government on Defence Medical Services, but just look at what the Defence Committee said about hospitals in ““Defence Costs Study No. 15””. It said that the situation was appalling and that the cuts had gone so far that it doubted whether medical services would ever recover. That was a Tory-led Defence Committee. The Tory-led Defence Committee said in 1996 that defence cuts had gone so far that if they proceeded in the same direction the defence of the realm would be severely endangered. I advise the shadow Secretary of State to look at my A to Z of Tory procurement foul-ups—the word ““foul-up”” was suggested when my first word was deemed inadvisable by the Clerks. All I am saying is, yes, we have made mistakes, but, on balance, this is not the Labour party of the early 1980s. This Labour Government have behaved, if not impeccably and perfectly, then in a way that has defended this country’s interests well, and they will continue to do so. The hon. Member for Woodspring does neither himself nor his party any good by imagining that we are a party of extremist troglodytes who have somehow found their way into office and are now doing their best to undermine the security of the state and the welfare of our armed forces.