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Defence Policy

I apologise for not being present for the whole time, but I am grateful to be called to contribute to what has been a good debate. I agree with the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Sarah McCarthy-Fry) that Britain is a force for good in the world. We should hear that much more and I believe that we have seen a consensus tonight that liberty, freedom, democracy, human rights and equal rights are universal aspirations that peoples all over the world wish to enjoy. We are often called on as a nation—as are our brave servicemen and women—to enforce British foreign policy or international law, but we can do so only with the right level of armed forces. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) was absolutely right to say that the current level of UK commitment needs to be backed up with appropriate levels of personnel and equipment. I believe that a strong defence means a strong peace. We often talk about peacekeeping operations as well as aggressive operations and the same rules apply in respect of having the right level of capability. I will touch only briefly on Afghanistan and Iraq later, as they have been ably covered in great detail this evening. I would like to deal with a few areas that have not been elaborated on so far. First, given that this is a broad defence policy debate, I would like to discuss the ballistic missile defence shield. The fact is that in July and November last year I asked two questions about it—[Interruption.]—and I am pleased to see that the Secretary of State is in his place to hear my thoughts on the matter. It is time that we had a proper debate on Britain’s role in the ballistic missile defence shield. Some people say that the current technology does not work. Well, that is what they said about the tank when it was first rolled out and we know that it has developed somewhat since 1915. I believe that the technology is getting there. There is no doubt that the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the increased number of countries with access to intercontinental ballistic missiles means that Britain is more vulnerable now than ever before, as other Members have suggested. It certainly will be in the next few years if Members do not accept my premise on that point. That being the case, we need to be clear that our first duty as MPs is to ensure that we defend our nation. We must therefore ensure that we are part of the American ballistic missile defence shield. Of course, a very expensive price tag is attached, which is why I suggest that the quid pro quo for the Americans having their eyes and ears at Fylingdales and one or two other places in this nation is that the Pentagon picks up the bill for the ballistic missile defence shield, so that it is not a spending commitment but a commitment, as I am sure the Secretary of State would agree, to ensuring that this nation and our constituents are protected in future. Japan is making its own way. It has the Americans using Aegis destroyers off its coast, with ship-based missiles that can track and intercept incoming missiles to Japan. There are also other platforms, such as airborne ones with specially adapted 747s, and land-based systems that might be placed in Poland and the Czech Republic. It is right that we should have a debate on whether we should have land-based or other forms of platform that can track and intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles that might come our way in the future. Of course, some people say that, if we do that, we will put the United Kingdom at risk. In fact, we are already at risk if we supply the eyes and ears to the Americans, through Fylingdales and other bases. If there were a simultaneous attack on the UK and America, the UK would be in a farcical position. Someone from Permanent Joint Headquarters or the equivalent could phone the Pentagon and say, ““There are missiles coming on your eastern seaboard””, and the Americans could interdict those missiles, but we could do absolutely nothing about the missiles coming to the UK. It is a mistake of any Government—indeed, any Parliament—to say that that threat will never be realised and that that risk is minimum. We must be prepared for the unexpected; so I hope that the Secretary of State will take this opportunity to say that there will be a full debate about the future of the ballistic missile defence shield and the UK’s role in it. That brings me to the Trident replacement. I remember the former Foreign Secretary controversially opening the debate on that and the Secretary of State closing it. In that debate, I welcomed the Trident replacement, but I also mentioned new technologies. The hon. Member for Portsmouth, North talked about the flexibility of weaponry, and again she was absolutely right. The trouble with nuclear weapons is that there is very little flexibility. Yes, we must have a deterrent; yes, the deterrent has worked; but I humbly submit that we need something more than conventional weapons and something less than nuclear ones. Of course, if we use nuclear weapons, there is nuclear fallout, huge international political fallout and moral fallout. They are the weapons of last resort. We need a new weapon that gives us more flexibility to send a very powerful message to our would-be enemies if we need to do so that is greater than that associated with conventional weaponry. So what is that new technology? It is hypersonic technology, and the Secretary of State knows a lot about it. Hypersonic mass technology will give us such flexibility, because it allows the UK to tell a rogue state or an enemy that, by ratcheting up or ratcheting down, we can take out a military town, a military city or even a military hamlet. Of course, conventional weapons are limited in their capability. If we wanted to focus on a military town to send a message to a rogue state that was threatening us with intercontinental ballistic missiles, perhaps nuclear tipped, we would perhaps not want to consider the nuclear option. So we need a middle way, and it might be hypersonic mass technology.