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Defence Policy

I am pleased to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, after hearing my colleague on the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Hamilton). I hope that you will forgive me for pointing out in this important debate about defence policy that only three members of the Defence Committee are present. However, that represents a 100 per cent. turnout, because I believe that every other member is on an overseas visit to Georgia and Turkey, at a sensitive time for relations with Turkey. That is an important visit and I am sure that each of us here regrets that we are not on it. However, we felt our loyalties torn, because we wanted to take part in this debate. It must be one of the most curious coincidences since Sir Cecil Rhodes discovered Rhodesia how often these defence debates, of which there are five every year, occur when the Defence Committee has already planned to be abroad. I wonder whether you could use your good offices, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to look into how often that coincidence occurs and whether the business managers of the House could not contrive to ensure that the Committee’s members are more likely than not to be present and available to participate in these debates. I must also apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, those on the Front Benches and the House for being unable to be present for the wind-ups for this debate, since I have had a long-standing commitment elsewhere. For that reason I shall keep my remarks short and to the point. I regard this debate about defence policy as one of the most important in the defence calendar. It is the one in which we can legitimately raise and discuss the very fundamentals of what our defence is about. It is usual when called to speak after a considerable number of speakers in such a debate to praise the quality of it. There have been some good speeches, but there have also been some exchanges that, I am pleased to reflect, very few members of Her Majesty’s armed forces will have been bothered to witness on their television screens. I raised with the Secretary of State the question of the increases in the defence budget as compared with other countries. My hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) raised from the Dispatch Box the share of GDP that we spend on defence. We know in all parts of the House that the strain on the armed forces and on the defence budget is a real topic and that it is more acute than it has been for some considerable time. We know that the Government are wrestling with the dilemma and that an incoming alternative Government would have to wrestle with it, too. We also know that no ludicrous commitments will be made in the Chamber this evening about any particular level of spending. That is what Governments do in comprehensive spending reviews and spending statements; it is something that Oppositions do not do, for obvious reasons, not least because promises made by Oppositions are rarely believed by the voters. The crucial question that we must ask ourselves is whether the House will face up to its responsibilities and honour the military covenant, which my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) raised, which means honouring the obligations towards our servicemen—those who are serving, those who are training and those who are injured—the families who are the bereaved and the veterans who have fought for their country and now left the armed forces. Are we going to equip our armed forces for what we constantly ask them to do or are we going to carry on operating on a shoestring? The story of the Territorial Army, which my hon. Friend raised, is a case in point. We are talking about very small sums of money, and it is the same in terms of housing. Relatively small sums of money would make a huge difference to the quality of life of many servicemen and their families. However, the defence chiefs are confronted constantly with a choice: do they cut the capabilities that they are trying to deploy into the field for those other programmes or do they try to protect the size of their declining manpower and their delayed equipment budgets? Those are the constant dilemmas that must be faced in the Ministry of Defence, because we are trying to do too much with too little.