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Defence in the World

I have not called for those forces to be much reduced; I have called for more co-operation with the allies that we believe we will be engaged with. That needs to be a greater part of our thinking in respect of expeditionary warfare capabilities and, indeed, in terms of sustaining for the longer term the sort of defences that we would need if we found ourselves once again involved in state-on-state warfare. Before I finish, I want to ask the Government what preparations they are undertaking in advance of the non-nuclear proliferation treaty review conference in 2010. Britain played a very constructive and laudable part in the success of the 2000 NPT review conference, and Robin Cook in particular deserved a great deal of credit for that. In my view and that of my colleagues, last year's decision to keep Britain in the nuclear club well beyond Hiroshima's centenary in 2045 was premature. Given that the Government have taken that decision, however, I would hope that they want to balance the message that that sent out with evidence of a clear commitment to non-proliferation. Indeed, I very much hope that at the 2010 conference the British Government will provide the leadership that they provided at the 2000 conference. I believe Britain has an opportunity to lead disarmament and reassert some authority that may have been lost through our involvement in Iraq. We need to try to gain some of that ground and push for obligations to be met, as well as meeting our own commitments to international disarmament. In conclusion, we need defence for this generation. Our current capabilities still reflect past conflicts to some extent and we are not necessarily prepared to respond to future challenges. We need, as I have said, a new strategic defence review that really puts emphasis on foreign policy-led defence posture and that concentrates far more fully on how we can co-operate with our allies in NATO, in the United States and within Europe. Traditional defence planning is now out of date. We need a force that is flexible and able to endure the various challenges that it might be faced with. That will involve difficult decisions. Whether we increase spending to match our operations in the short term or whether we reconfigure and realign the armed forces to meet the budget that is available, the decisions are tricky. It is no great surprise that the Government have taken some time to take some of the difficult procurement decisions, but there is, in my view, a fundamental mismatch between what we are trying to do and the resources that we are able to make available to it. If we cannot make more resources available, we will need to have a fundamental rethink about what we are trying to do.