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Defence in the World

The Minister makes an interesting suggestion. I do not have such an inflator at my fingertips, but if he believes that such a thing could be considered, it would be good for the House to debate it. The Ministry of Defence is in financial crisis—that is widely understood and commented on. It serves to underline the mismatch between what we are trying to achieve and the available resources. I have already come under fire for my party's belief that our operations in Iraq should be brought gradually to an end. That cannot be done overnight, but getting one of the major deployments in which we are involved off the balance sheet will help. We do not have the right balance between the configuration of our troops and the procurement decisions to back up those troops. I believe that the solution is another fundamental strategic defence review. If the country, under any political scenario that we can envisage, will not have more resources to commit to defence than we currently have, we must make decisions that get us back into balance. It is not my imagination, that of the Tories or that of the media that the armed forces are overstretched or that the Ministry of Defence is in financial crisis. Anybody who is alert to what is going on can see that both assertions are true. There is therefore a need for a fundamental review and some tough decisions. The Minister asked whether there was some other inflator. Defence expenditure was 2.4 per cent. of GDP in the last financial year. It has been on a steady downward trend from a high in 1984-85, when the figure was 5.2 per cent. Real terms increases can be expressed in simple cash terms but, as a proportion of GDP, and in terms of the spending power of the money in the defence budget, expenditure has clearly decreased. We are waiting for some big procurement decisions. Indeed, the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) had an incredible shopping list of items that he awaits with great optimism. If he had written such a list to Santa as a child, he would have been horribly disappointed. However, we are waiting for some crucial decisions. I do not envy Ministers the agonies that they have undergone in recent months when considering what to do, but we fear that more and more projects will be pushed to one side and that there will be salami chopping to make the finances balance. That is not a strategic or sensible way in which to run our nation's defence.