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Defence in the UK

I hope that the Minister is enjoying his time in the Ministry of Defence. I recall vividly that when I was appointed Secretary of State for Defence, I received a letter from the late Julian Amery, who said, "You will enjoy the Ministry of Defence. They spoil their Ministers and make them feel heroic." As Defence Ministers inspect guards of honour, sit in tanks and fly in planes, one can understand what he meant. I want to begin by addressing what is, in a certain sense, a paradox. The Government will constantly say, as they have said for many years, that there is real growth in the defence budget and that there has been over the period that they have been in office. Technically, they are correct. They will also maintain that the UK, after the US, spends more on defence than virtually any other country in the world. That, too, is correct. However, one recalls the remark that one can use statistics like the drunk man uses the lamp post—for support rather than illumination. The Minister and the Government know as well as the rest of us that although those statistics might have some technical accuracy, they are combined with equally important facts that were referred to by my hon. Friend the shadow Defence Secretary. Over the past 12 years, we have seen a dramatic reduction in the number of aircraft and combat ships and in the manpower of the armed forces. We have also seen the Government's inability to carry out the task that they have appointed for themselves without extraordinary overstretch for the armed forces and an unprecedented use of our reserve forces, to which I shall return in a few moments' time. So, how does one explain the fact that despite real growth the outcome is so depressing? Part of it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) said, was that the increase in the cost of procurement projects is vastly greater than any retail prices index might show when it is used to determine the defence budget. That is clearly part of the explanation, but another element has been the continuing and increasing pressure to improve—quite rightly, in many ways—the pay and allowances for our armed forces. That, too, is something that we welcome, but it has the consequences to which I have referred. However, the Government cannot escape the fact that another part of the explanation is that their policy over the past 12 years has resulted in far greater use of our armed forces in a series of wars, conflicts and operations. That has not been funded simply by the reserve, because it has involved a much greater utilisation of equipment. The fact that that equipment is used far more often means that it has a shorter life and constantly needs to be repaired and improved, and the overall impact has been of a very serious order. I freely acknowledge—indeed, I take great pride in the fact—that, after the US, the UK and France are the only countries that can claim a significant ability to deploy armed forces around the world. There are larger armies—in Russia, India and China, and so forth—but, for various reasons with which I am sure that the House is familiar, the UK and France remain very important countries. I deliberately include France in this regard because it is comparable with the UK in the sense that both countries are able to match diplomacy with military capability, where that is appropriate. That is hugely desirable but, despite the incredible economic growth of the past 12 years and the massive increase in cash going to the Ministry of Defence, there has still been extraordinary overstretch in all sorts of ways. If that has been true during the years of plenty, what do we have to look forward to now, given that we have entered a period for which there are extremely lean implications? The hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) said that there was a need for a review at some stage. I think that he is right, but we must clarify what we mean by that. In a sense, I am addressing my comments on this matter to both Front-Bench teams because, although there will undoubtedly be a need for a review, it cannot be only a defence review or limited to our armed forces. Any review must combine the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with the Ministry of Defence in a way that has not happened before. Only then will we end up with a coherent and deliverable policy that does not repeat the mistakes of the past. Most of the time, our defence and armed forces are not an end in themselves but the means to an end determined by our foreign policy. Defence is the handmaiden of foreign policy: it is one of the means—although not the only one—by which we sometimes have to implement or advance our foreign policy objectives. Frederick the Great once remarked that diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments. Over the past 12 years, our armed forces have been used to a degree unprecedented since 1945. Under Mr. Blair, and the trend has continued under this Government, we have had a series of wars. Of course, wars did not begin in 1997, but what has been unprecedented is that most of the wars since then have not been wars of necessity. Instead, they have been wars of choice. I do not want to go today into the question of whether the choices were right or wrong. That is a separate issue but, in the past, most of the wars that we found ourselves in were ones in which either we or our allies had been attacked. War therefore became necessary, because no other option was available. However, the wars in Kosovo and Iraq were wars of choice, and the same is true of what happened in Sierra Leone: even though that was a very small combat operation, it was still a war of choice on the Government's part. I concede that the war in Afghanistan is more difficult to determine, because of 9/11 and the rest of the background. One could say that it was an intervention of necessity, but in every other respect the operations that have been putting such huge pressure on our armed forces were not imposed on the British Government. They were something no Government could have ignored; they were decisions, right or wrong, that the Government chose to take. If we are in that world, it is crucial that this essential review—whether the Government are Labour, or indeed Conservative—not just takes into account the foreign policy that the Government of the day want to pursue, but must actually be based on it. I have made no secret of my dislike of the policy of using our armed forces to intervene in other people's wars, but I want the United Kingdom to continue to have a global world role. We have much to contribute to the world and, for the most part, our contribution is highly beneficial, but the worst possible outcome would be for us to continue to have aspirations towards a global foreign policy while we refuse or are unable to provide the means to implement it, in particular its military component, whenever it may prove necessary. That would be the worst of all possible worlds. I point out to my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis), perhaps more than to the Government—they are at the end of their term and we are about to begin ours—that implementing that role will be a crucial requirement. We know that the Government have been reluctant to deal with the comprehensive spending review, no doubt because they have problems not just with defence but with all sorts of areas of expenditure. However, with the exception of health and, I think, overseas development, there would be no ring-fencing of any budget by a future Conservative Government. In a way, I welcome that; it is right and proper that such matters are examined without preconditions and without too many pre-qualifications, but it is crucial that the next Conservative Government deal with the problem—as much as the Labour Government have failed to—in a way that does not continue the desperately serious overstretch of recent times. In the second half of my remarks, which is linked to the first, I shall concentrate on our reserve forces. I declare an interest as I was for eight years the honorary colonel of a Territorial Army regiment. Hearing about the invitation to do that was as much of a surprise to me as it may be to other Members. Normally when someone ceases to be Secretary of State for Defence, the armed forces never wish to see them or hear of them again, regardless of personality or the colour of the Government concerned, so the invitation was unusual and a great privilege. One day I must table a parliamentary question to find out how many Secretaries of State for Defence in the Labour Government were so approached after their term of office. I suspect that the answer would cheer me up enormously. The way in which the Territorial Army has been used over the past 12 years has been one of the most serious examples of problems in resources leading to policy decisions that have had, and continue to have, serious implications of a considerable kind. I remind the House that until the Reserve Forces Act 1996, the reserves had not been used since 1945. Such was the legal position throughout those years that there had either to be general mobilisation of the whole Territorial Army or no use of the reserves at all. For example, the Territorial Army was never used in the Gulf war or the Falklands war, because there was no legal basis that would have permitted that without mobilising the whole reserve force. That caused considerable frustration. Many individual reservists, having received splendid training, wanted to be able to use the skills they had been given. As Secretary of State, I initiated the policy changes that led to the 1996 Act and I am delighted that we introduced it. However, the Act has been used in ways far different from anything that was contemplated. Under the Act, it was contemplated that it would be possible to use individual units for a particular short-term operation, or to fill some immediate gap to deal with what nowadays we would call a "surge requirement" for a limited period, but that is not what has happened. There has, in fact, been a continuous use of the reserves in the wars and operations that have continued without interruption since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Afghanistan, our involvement looks like continuing for a number of years to come. We had better be clear about the implications of that. The Labour Government's general attitude towards the reservists has, I fear, been pretty shabby. One of the decisions that they took in the 1998 strategic defence review was to make a massive reduction in the size of the Territorial Army. It was 56,000-strong at that time; it has 36,000 people today. Over the past 12 years, we have entered the worst of all possible worlds; there has been unprecedented use of our reservists exactly when their numbers have been dramatically reduced to their lowest level for many generations, if not ever. It is that dysfunction and disharmony that is so indefensible, in my judgment. Let me give the House figures relating to what has happened since 1997. Since 2003—that is, since our involvement with Iraq, Afghanistan and so forth—17,000 reservists have been mobilised. That represents 9 per cent. of those mobilised in Afghanistan, and 4 per cent. of those mobilised in Iraq. I draw attention to a particular point: when we passed the 1996 Act, we did not envisage those sorts of numbers. We said that the use of an individual reservist should be such that his or her cumulative exposure should be a maximum of one year in three. That remains, I think, the legal position today. The Ministry of Defence handout, "Future use of the UK's Reserve Forces", published on 7 February 2005, says, in referring to the massive mobilisation that the 1996 Act never envisaged:""It is recognised that regular mobilisation of the VRF"—" that is, the volunteer reserve forces—""up to this maximum is unsustainable."" It goes on to say:""The feedback…is that a limit of up to 12 months' service in aggregate over 5 years is more reasonable unless the individual volunteers for more frequent tours."" That sounds good; that sounds as if the policy were becoming more flexible. However, the document goes on to say:""Where possible, this is the level which we intend to apply unless no viable alternative exists."" In other words, the Government make the concession, and make it meaningless, in the same sentence. It is not sustainable to continue with that policy. I say that to the Government and, indeed, to my right hon. and hon. Friends, because I suspect that they will have responsibility for the matter in the not-too-distant future. We already know the consequences. Reservists have been voting with their feet. After the Iraq war, between 2003 and 2005, some 15,000 reservists quit, and they have not been replaced. I mentioned earlier that the size of the Territorial Army is 36,000. That is not its authorised strength; its authorised strength is 42,000. The reason it has only 36,000 people is that it has not been able to recruit the numbers required. People have not been willing or able to join in the numbers that the Government presumably think necessary. That should cause serious concern to the Government Front-Bench team. I make one final point in drawing to the end of my remarks. It may be said, "Well, you know, it is not just reservists whom we have had problems recruiting; the regular forces have had similar difficulties." That is true, but there is a crucial distinction that I do not think has yet been mentioned. Over the past few years, we have gone through a period of very low unemployment. Historically, when unemployment is low, the regular forces have difficulty recruiting to the extent required. For very sad reasons, that will now change. Now that unemployment is becoming a serious problem, it is likely that the regular forces will not have anything like the same difficulty recruiting. Although that will benefit the regular forces, exactly the opposite argument will apply to the Territorial Army. Precisely because unemployment is increasing and getting very high indeed, employers will have not the slightest incentive, when they have such a vast number of people from whom they can recruit, to chose those who, for one year in three, or whatever the period will be, are required by the Government to fill the gaps that they are not prepared to fill through the regular Army.