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Foreign Affairs and Defence

It is a feature of being fairly low down the parliamentary food chain that my remarks will be curtailed. It has been an interesting debate, with an opportunity to listen to some of those whom I respect most in the House, not least my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who is my neighbour, and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who made a typically courageous speech on Zimbabwe. This is an interesting time for defence. We know about the draw-down of force levels in Iraq. Despite it being a particularly bloody time in Afghanistan, there are interesting political development there. We hear stories that Mullah Omar, for example, is being invited by President Karzai to Kabul. We wait to see how that situation evolves. Who would have asked themselves in the early 1970s how long Operation Banner would continue in Northern Ireland? Would we honestly have said that we would be there for a further 35 years? I believe that the prevailing wisdom is right and that we will be in Afghanistan for a very long time, but who knows? Is this not the time for a new strategic defence review? Many of us in the House would like nothing more than to see the armed forces substantially enlarged. We all live in the real world and know that there is nothing in the kitty for a much larger expansion of our armed forces in the next few years. When my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench talk about defence expenditure, Ministers huff and puff and attack us for not being specific about our financial commitments, but they know and their predecessors who were involved in the previous strategic defence review know that it is impossible from the Opposition Benches to give accurate estimates of the expenditure that one wants to achieve in defence. It is not possible through freedom of information trawls or written questions, for example, to find out why there are more than 20,000 people employed in defence procurement and similar areas. I compliment the Government on the 1998 strategic defence review. I took another look at it the other day. It is a very good document, which described Britain's place in the world as it was seen at that time, and it tried to balance our understanding of where we in this country feel Britain should be with a resource commitment to our armed forces. Unfortunately, the resource commitment has since been fudged. As part of a future review, we need a close examination of procurement. There are two prevailing and polarised views on procurement. One approach, voiced by one of my hon. Friends, whom I informed that I intended to mention his position, is that procurement has been wasteful and even corrupt. It has denied our servicemen on operations the equipment that they need. My hon. Friend and others would argue that it is focused on defence industrial profiles, perhaps in marginal seats, rather than on the equipment needs of our fighting soldiers, sailors and airmen. Those who hold that view argue that it is better to buy equipment off the peg. The other approach is that procurement is complicated and it takes time to get it right. Weapons systems are complex. Those who take that view would argue that it is a strategic imperative to maintain a diverse defence and aerospace industrial base, and that British defence companies are good for our security and our balance of payments. They would also argue that it makes strategic sense to have long-term relationships with defence manufacturers. So, there are two clear certainties. I am always jealous of those who can be certain about anything in politics. There are certain things about which we can all be certain—I am sounding like Rumsfeld now—but for most of us, issues such as this are not black and white; there is no light and dark, but a large area of grey. I believe that both the polarities that I have described are to a large extent right and to an extent wrong. Both arguments can select examples from recent years to cite in their own support. The ““off the peg”” fraternity, for example, will cite a number of shambolic experiences such as the Nimrod fiasco, which has cost more than £2.9 billion more than was originally predicted. On the other side of the argument, those who disagree with the ““off the peg”” option for complex military matériel will cite the case of the Boeing Chinook Mk III. That has been an absolute fiasco, given that the helicopters still sit in sheds somewhere while people try to sort out the software, which cannot work with our systems. I hope that a new Conservative Government will ignore any certainties from the past and develop a clear vision for procurement, first by learning from the experiences of urgent operational requirements. Let us face it, those are fairly simple pieces of military kit; a mine-proof vehicle is relatively simple compared with a Chinook helicopter. The good news about urgent operational requirements is the speed with which they can be delivered to the front line. Of course, Ministers do not talk about the fact that a large proportion of the cost is clawed back from the core defence budget in subsequent years. Secondly, we have to accept that there is a strategic imperative of maintaining relationships and working a skills base across a domestic aerospace and defence industry. There are good reasons for that; there are our own defence needs and there are the wider advantages of a vibrant aerospace and defence industrial base and the benefit that it gives to our balance of payments and employment. We also need to consider the third issue, which is to do with the speed at which we provide equipment from start to finish. In military jargon, we talk about the ““flash to bang”” time. As a soldier, I always found that bizarre. It was supposed to be the method that we used to measure the distance that we were from an atomic device that was going off; I never thought that we would be in much of a position to measure that in the first place. The ““flash to bang”” time for the delivery of matériel to our armed forces has been astonishingly long, and that should be one of the core things that we seek to change in future. Fourthly, we should consider upgrades. Extending the end-of-life date for platforms is extremely important. We can learn from the experiences of the Tornado; the improvements made by British Aerospace on the targeting pod and the complexity of electronic warfare systems can give much extended life. As has been mentioned, the five criteria applied to procurement are capability, affordability, adaptability, interoperability and exportability. I shall talk about the latter soon, but I would add one more: rapidity, which is important. I draw Ministers' attention to an article in Jane's Defence Weekly this week. It discusses the need to find a means of reigniting economic growth across western economies. It says:"““Such an opportunity has already been missed in the UK, where the treasury's 24 November pre-budget report outlined a GBP20 billion…stimulus package that included GBP3 billion for infrastructure projects. The defence sector was largely ignored””." It goes on to describe the disappointment in the defence sector. There have been leaks in the Financial Times about cuts to various projects, and that is extremely worrying. Our defence exports are a wonderful way of enhancing our economy and supporting British industry at this time. That makes all the more crazy the decision taken about 18 months ago to close down the Defence Export Services Organisation and replace it with a new organisation based within UK Trade and Investment. That decision by the Prime Minister, which was taken in his first few days in office, possibly with the encouragement of Baroness Vadera, has destroyed one of the best examples of Government-industry co-operation. In the defence industry, there is a £55,000 per employee added value element to what they do. That is a fantastic earner for our country. I cannot understand why the decision was taken. DESO was a first-class organisation. We have lost a lot of the people who were fundamental to the success of our defence industry, and the new organisation, whatever its merits—I applaud the people who are involved with it—will not be as good. The good news is that it is portable, and as soon as possible it should be transferred back into the remit of the Ministry of Defence, where it can do Government-to-Government sales and people will want to work with it to achieve that. The Prime Minister's decision has satisfied neither side. For all the celebrations among the anti-arms trade people, it did not satisfy them because they see that there is still an organisation in Government; and it certainly did not satisfy the defence industry. I hope that we can encourage the people who are still working in the organisation to hang on in there and assure them that they will be valued by a future Government, when they can return to the Ministry of Defence and we can continue with a successful defence industry that can work well for jobs in this country, for our balance of payments and for the future prosperity of us all.