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Defence in the World

I share some thinking in common with the hon. Gentleman. The conflict prevention pool is a useful innovation, and it is proving to be a useful source of resources, helping us to do some of the work in Afghanistan, for example. Have we got every nook and cranny of the policy right? Probably not. There is also the question of how much we are prepared to invest in such initiatives, which is a wider matter on which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor expresses his views from time to time. However, I think that we have the beginnings of a much better approach. It needs to develop and—let us be honest—it could probably do with more resources as well. However, there will be an opportunity to look at such issues in future spending rounds, and I very much hope that it is taken. By the way, I should also inform the hon. Gentleman that I have not finished talking about resources—I am coming back to that subject. We will always, rightly, look to NATO for collective defence, but I believe strongly that the European Union can play its part too, using armed forces alongside its civilian capabilities. That is not about duplicating what NATO can do. Indeed, the real problem is that European countries have too few defence capabilities, not too many. I want to see Europeans developing more capability that they can put at the service of NATO or the European Union. I want to see Europeans taking more responsibility for solving the world's problems, whether through NATO or the European Union. I also want the European Union to show what it can do when it focuses on outcomes rather than institutions, as it has done in countering piracy in the gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia, for example. In sum, we need organisations that can respond, recognise the nature of a risk when it appears, think rapidly and imaginatively across boundaries, flex resources to where they are needed and work in partnership to implement solutions. I hope that we can leave behind the old yah-boo anti-Europeanism that has bedevilled debates on the subject in the past, because it does not advance our national security interests. Instead, it hinders them. As for our capability, I would mention just two emerging priorities. We will need to build and maintain an advantage over our adversaries in information and decision making. Advanced forms of collection, including through unmanned aerial vehicles, should be integrated in our forces and not just seen as an additional luxury. We will also need to develop capabilities that protect our information networks from increasingly sophisticated attacks. Such non-kinetic attacks on our vital infrastructure from cyberspace are clearly attractive to our adversaries, and we have got to counter them. How we decide on the appropriate capabilities and how we acquire them on time and on budget will be vital to the success of our armed forces in defeating the threats that we now face and might face in future. Today we do not just have to plan for contingent threats against a sophisticated state adversary, where the practical implications of our planning assumptions are tested in large part by their deterrence effect. As the past decade has instead proved, today our armed forces are engaged in less conventional, counter-insurgency and peace enforcement operations in defence of our national security, so now our planning assumptions are tested in the heat of battle, with no room for delay or failure. Every one of our servicemen and women has the right to know that we are doing everything possible to ensure that every pound of investment in our equipment programme goes towards the front line and is not wasted in inefficient or weak processes of acquisition. That is why I asked Bernard Gray in December last year to conduct a detailed examination of progress in implementing the MOD's acquisition change programme, as I hope right hon. and hon. Members will recall. I have to be satisfied that the current programme of change is sufficient to meet the challenges of the new combat environment that we now face. To date, I am not. I expect to receive the report shortly. Bernard Gray has conducted a thorough and wide-ranging analysis. I am confident that when his report is published, it will be both honest about the scale of the task that confronts us and clear in describing a detailed and radical blueprint to reform the process of acquisition in the MOD from top to bottom. That is something that we must get right. There can be no room for complacency, and given the current tempo of operations, we have no choice but to act with urgency. I will publish Bernard Gray's report before the summer recess, and I will come to the House again to outline the Government's response to it. Given the size of the challenge that we face, I am in no doubt whatever that change must happen and that it must be radical. There must be changes to the system and structure of acquisition process, changes to the incentives that drive and determine behaviours—behaviours that have often lead to waste, delay and efficiency, bedevilling the efforts of both Labour and Conservative Governments over a long period—and changes to the skills sets of those involved in acquisition. I am committed to doing everything that I can to make it possible for our armed forces to be better served, and I will make future announcements in due course. Most members of today's armed forces joined after 9/11, in the new security environment that it created. That is the context in which they have always experienced operations. Their language is that of counter-insurgency and their primary enemy is the terrorist in civilian clothing, indistinguishable from the civilians he mingles with—the terrorist who threatens not just our people, but our friends and allies across the world. Our edge in defeating that threat is acquired in the training that our people receive and the equipment that they use, which is second to none, backed up by satellite bandwidth or a UAV controlled from thousands of miles away. We must ensure that our policies, systems and capabilities reflect today's realities, so that those who serve today are given the best support possible. However, we will fail those who will serve us in years to come if we fail to plan now for tomorrow's emerging threats. I will not allow that to happen.