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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for his intervention. However, I think that it is clear from the noises off that the House would like an opportunity to get all that information at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary might extend his invitation and offer to make a statement to the House on this worsening crisis. We have watched events in years gone by—we are not without our own measure of guilt on this issue, it has to be said—and we must ensure that we do not sit by while another crisis in the conflict develops. However, I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for this offer, and we will certainly take up any invitation to have a briefing on the legal elements of the matter. While there is general agreement on most aspects of strategy, on which the House takes a relatively bipartisan approach, there is profound disquiet about how the Government have handled the armed forces, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) pointed out in his powerful speech this afternoon. The list of indictments against the Government's stewardship of our defence policy and armed forces grows ever longer. They began well, with a strategic defence review that had widespread support. From this, the defence planning assumptions gave rise to the defence budget. But the Government then went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, exceeding the planning assumptions without increasing the resources appropriately. The result has been continually worsening overstretch of our armed forces, with the burden being carried ever more by service families. The Government failed to plan properly for the aftermath of the Iraq war, and our casualty rates have consequently risen. They even knowingly sent our troops into battle in Iraq without the necessary body armour, for party political considerations. They cut the helicopter budget by £1.4 billion in 2004, when we were already involved in two conflicts. Now we have to beg our allies to fill the gap created. The Government reduced the size of the infantry by three battalions at a time when we were fighting two major operations. Since 1997, our active aircraft carrier fleet has been cut from three to two; our frigate and destroyer fleet has been cut from 35 to 25; our attack submarine fleet will have been cut from 12 to nine: all below the numbers that the Government themselves said that we needed to implement the strategic defence review. It is not necessary to take my word for it. Lord West, the current Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for security and counter-terrorism and a former First Sea Lord, said:"““Maybe I'm just a silly old””" fool—I paraphrase, Madam Deputy Speaker—"““but I've got 41 years experience of these things and I can tell you we need 30 destroyers and frigates for what the Government wants us to do.””" To make matters worse, the Government recently abolished the Defence Export Services Organisation. That was to the delight of those who oppose the arms trade, which, as my hon. Friends the Members for Mid-Sussex and for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) said, provides so many British jobs. Who were the happy ones? The Campaign Against Arms Trade. As CAAT news says, ““DESO: We won!””. That is a disgrace. Yet for all that, the first act of the new Prime Minister, while we were still losing troops in two dangerous conflicts, was to appoint a part-time Defence Secretary, who spends his time fighting both the Scottish National party and the Taliban. Again, comment from the Government's own side is most interesting. Lord Gilbert, a former Labour Minister of State for Defence, stated in the other place only a few days ago:"““The double-hatting of Defence Secretary with Scottish Secretary is one of the most disgraceful appointments that I have ever heard of. I hope that the Prime Minister realises the damage that it is doing to him, to his party, to the Government and to people's respect for government. There are people who have relatives serving in the Armed Forces, young men and women at risk. We all know that Cabinet offices in this country are part-time jobs, because one has a salary as a Member of Parliament and as a Cabinet Minister. That the Defence Secretary's job has been divided further, so that he answers Scottish Questions, is—I am trying to find a moderate word—deplorable.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 November 2007; Vol. 696, c. 120.]" That is what a senior Labour figure said. It looks like the Government are increasingly dysfunctional and incoherent. The Prime Minister went to Iraq to announce troop reductions, which the Secretary of State knew nothing about until the last minute. Lord Drayson was so angry about being kept in the dark about DESO and the lack of support he gained in his conflict with the Treasury that he decided to quit and take up motor racing. Now it appears that the Secretary of State has lost his fight to stop the Treasury raiding the MOD core budget to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps it is therefore inevitable that people now believe that the Government have broken the military covenant. The think-tank Demos is hardly the sort of hysterical critic that was talked about earlier yet it said:"““The Military Covenant—the contract between the nation and service personnel and their families who make personal sacrifices in return for fair treatment and commensurate terms and conditions of service—has been damaged almost beyond repair.””" The Gracious Speech will do nothing to dispel the widespread belief that defence is a second-order issue for this Prime Minister. There was reference in that speech to the UN, the G8 and the EU as part of our security architecture, but it did not even mention either the United States or NATO. The Prime Minister can tell all the newspapers he likes how much he loves America, but we will judge him on what he does. He has never had much interest in the military. As Lord Guthrie said:"““I certainly viewed Brown as unsympathetic to defence. He didn't make much effort to educate himself about defence””." Asked if he thought vital defence spending was approved by Tony Blair but blocked by his Chancellor, he replied that ““that is exactly right””. Perhaps that is the clearest indictment possible. Our forces deserve so much better.