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Defence Policy

This has been a wide-ranging debate. I shall touch on only three areas of defence policy. I apologise for being absent for part of the debate; I did not want to miss a meeting with the Border and Immigration Agency. I hope that I do not repeat things that were said earlier. The hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Hamilton), who is not in the Chamber now, raised a number of serious issues, including that of housing for service personnel returning home after duty. He said that in his area it had always been accepted that soldiers would be given houses as long as they were available, and that he had no evidence that it was different anywhere else. I paraphrase what he said. I have received a telephone call from a serving soldier in Germany who, when he telephoned his local housing department back home, was told that he should return and declare himself homeless, as that was the only way in which he could get on to a housing list and obtain accommodation. That was wholly wrong and unacceptable, and I agree with the hon. Member for Midlothian that it should never happen in any part of the country. I want to say something about the regiments and the ““golden thread””. At the time of the merger of the Scottish regiments into a single Royal Regiment of Scotland, undertakings were given to preserve the golden thread—the link and connectivity—between regiments and communities. In the past, General Sir Mike Jackson described the regimental structure as being"““the absolute bedrock to us””." He went further, saying that the golden thread represented"““the heritage, the history, the sense of belonging that is very much in our minds.””" He was right to say that. However, many of the symbols—only a minor element of this issue—such as cap badges, hackles, kilts and sporrans, as well as regimental traditions, have been quietly done away with. There is now a common parade kit for all five battalions in the Royal Regiment of Scotland, and soldiers of The Black Watch, now the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment, can wear the distinctive red hackle only when in combat uniform. Perhaps more important than the regimental traditions is the fact that recruits who could previously declare a preference for their local or family regiment are now expected to join battalions where there is a shortfall of troops—for example, 313 men in the Royal Regiment as of September. Those wishing to join up might now be encouraged to join a battalion other than the one that previously would have been their local regiment. It is not hard to draw the conclusion that one reason behind the failure to recruit and retain is the fact that people can no longer simply join the local regiment or even join the battalion within the Royal Regiment of Scotland with which they would most closely identify. I hope that the Government will look again at the conduct of recruitment and retention, particularly within the battalions of the Royal Regiment, although my preference would, of course, be to return to the proper regimental structure. The defence industry has a significant economic impact, so I shall now turn to jobs and procurement. As well as providing equipment to the services, the defence industry is vital to the Scottish and UK economy. A major issue is how and where the procurement and jobs are shared out. We acknowledge that Scotland is allocated a large chunk of the total amount of expenditure on personnel recruitment—8.5 per cent.—but we also know that the number of people recruited from Scotland into the MOD, service personnel and other bodies is far less than that share represents. We are also aware from the last year for which we have detailed analysis that although 8.5 per cent. is the share of money allocated for procurement of equipment in Scotland, the actual amount of money spent on procurement in Scotland is significantly less. The shortfall in personnel recruited and equipment procured from Scotland amounted to £750 million. This is not a Scotland-England or Scotland-UK issue: other parts of the UK would say precisely the same. The armed forces should mean something to everybody—in terms of the buy-in to them—and the Government have it within their power, to some extent at least, to ensure that the moneys are spent as evenly as possible throughout the UK.