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Defence Policy

People have the right to join any regiment or corps that they wish, but we have a target contingent for the Royal Regiment of Scotland, and it has a shortfall at present of more than 300. That is an ongoing problem that the removal of the Scottish regiments did not solve. We need to address it properly; otherwise, we will continue to have a shortfall, not only within the Royal Regiment of Scotland but in other regiments in England and elsewhere. The second point was about the procurement of equipment and the recruitment of personnel. If we are to make the armed forces meaningful for everybody, the Government have it within their power to look at how and where procurement is secured, and at how the budget for recruitment is spent to ensure that the necessary personnel are attracted from all parts of the UK. A huge amount of money is being spent. A large chunk has been allocated to Scotland, and we are well aware that not all of it is being spent in Scotland. The third point is a point of principle about Trident. The lifetime cost of its replacement will be between £25 billion and £75 billion. We know that 61 per cent. of the Scottish people oppose it and think that the Scottish Parliament should have the power to decide the issue. We know that the majority of Scottish Labour MPs oppose the Trident replacement. The vote in the Scottish Parliament was, I think, 71 to 16 against replacing Trident, so there is a massive groundswell of opinion—political and public—against replacing the Trident nuclear missile system in Scotland. The Government must of course take cognisance of that—and that, of course, is before we enter into any discussions about the morality or legality of nuclear weapons. I will not touch on Iraq or Afghanistan. This has been a wide-ranging debate, and many other Members have made salient points about those countries. However, irrespective of our opposition to the war in Iraq, it goes without saying that once the troops are in situ, they should be backed 100 per cent., as one would expect. I do hope that the Minister will, in summing up, look at the three substantive issues that I have raised. The first was recruitment, particularly to the Royal Regiment of Scotland, and the second was recruitment of personnel and procurement of equipment generally, and how the money is spent. Thirdly, I am sure that he will want to make a robust defence of why the Government want to spend £75 billion on a replacement for the Trident nuclear weapons system, at a time when there is overstretch, when there are constant complaints about a shortage of equipment and when the recruitment policy—not just in Scotland but elsewhere—is putting huge pressure on service personnel, who are being sent out for repeat tours, against the guidelines of the MOD.