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Defence Procurement

It will be one or the other; I am not making a political point. I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend. I do not know where the money is coming from. The Government have not worked it out yet, and we have no clue as to where it is going to come from, but the system will need to be paid for if we decide to have it. This is not just a straightforward yah-boo question of who is in favour of it and who is against. Some of the most important fighting men in this country are profoundly against a new Trident system. Some of the most thoughtful people are against it; some very good people are very much in favour of it. It is a very important, serious and expensive decision that will not be settled by having some sort of spat. The decision will have a profound effect on our status and role in the world and how we are perceived: if we were to give up the system, what impact would that have on all kinds of other things that we do? I endorse what my very wise right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Defence Committee, said about defence science. I beg the Minister not to cut the defence science budget. We are now in a period where we are moving to a completely new type of warfare. Of course we have to keep our hand in as regards all the other aspects, but over the next 20 years we will be asked to fight not in nation-to-nation conflict but war among the people. I commend Rupert Smith’s book to anyone who has not read it—it is interesting, wise and profound. We need to remake the armed forces in light of the threats that we will have to encounter in future, not those that we have encountered in the past. The wars that we will fight will be more like Afghanistan than D-day, and we must equip ourselves for that. Our aeroplanes, helicopters, training, infantry and weaponry—everything that goes to make up the modern battlefield—have to be right. We do not have the money to have anything going spare. We are not like the Americans, who are refashioning their whole doctrine on the basis of lessons that they learned in Iraq in a way that one would not believe possible. I do not know whether the Minister has been invited to Fort Leavenworth to see it, but the way in which they retrain is absolutely astonishing. They used to take lectures from us about counter-insurgency operations, as if we knew the answers, but they have completely retrained the army that has fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. In conclusion—I am sorry for going on for so long, Mr. Deputy Speaker—the next Government will have to decide whether Britain wants to play a role in the world. The last defence review by Lord Robertson was a really excellent piece of work, in my view. I would be very surprised if many of its supporting documents have to be substantially rewritten for today; certainly, the stuff on deployability will not have to be. Britain has to decide if she wants to continue to play a real role in the world. If we are to do so, we will have to find the money and the will to fashion a new, less sophisticated approach—much of the equipment that we are buying is too sophisticated—with more specialist equipment to deal with the wars and conflicts that our people are going to take part in. I would not want to see Britain doing anything other than playing a very full role in the world—that is to say, retaining not only the ability to conduct a high-intensity land battle but the extraordinary gift that British soldiers have of being able to switch that off in moments and, 25 yd further along the street, indulge in some real, serious nation-building and peacekeeping. That is the great brilliance of the British soldier: the question is whether our armed forces will be given the money to be able to do it.