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Defence

Of course I welcome that hugely. I also welcome the RBL's support for people who are leaving the forces, which is really important. However, I hope that the RBL will raise its game and help the public to understand the work that it does, every day of the week and every week of the year, not just for veterans but for young men and women who come out of the forces with either a physical or a mental difficulty. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) mentioned new threats. Of course he is right about cyber warfare, which I have been going on about relentlessly in the Defence Committee ever since I visited Estonia, that doughty partner of British forces in Afghanistan. I visited its cyber defence college. Estonia has a NATO-sponsored college, in which Britain plays a modest role. It is the only NATO nation that has been subject to cyber threat and cyber attack, and it has a lot to teach us. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman about climate change. When the Select Committee was preparing a report on the future of NATO two or three years ago, I was struck by a visit that I paid to Denmark. We heard that the Danes were way ahead of the curve in assessing the impact of climate change on strategic sea routes around the northern hemisphere. It was to the Danes' advantage to ensure that they were on top of defence strategy, because Greenland was suffering from a retreating ice sheet which was opening up opportunities not just for fossil fuel exploration and development, but for the strategic defence of new northern trade routes around the whole of the north American continent. When the Committee went to Moscow, I pursued that point with the Russians. They too have that new opportunity, all around the northern shores of the Russian Federation, with the possibility of new trade routes throughout the world. That is another reason why it is utter folly to talk of abandoning the Royal Navy aircraft carrier project. Britain must continue to have global reach. We need the Royal Navy, and we will need it even more in the next 10 to 20 years. We must not forget that. Given that more than 90 per cent. of Britain's trade depends on sea routes, our seaports—the great ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth, for instance—will depend on the Royal Navy for the preservation, conservation and growth of the nation's prosperity. New threats will need new solutions, therefore, and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North is right about the importance of intelligence, such as that from unmanned aerial vehicles, in various phases. It is in the interests of the nation for the Ministry of Defence to do all it can to improve the quality of its equipment and its people, and to help the families who support our servicemen and all those who follow the flag. I will no longer be a Member of this House when future defence debates take place, so I will not be able to contribute to them; this will be my last defence speech, after almost 27 years and an awful lot of defence speeches. My message has always been the same, however: we should spend more of our GDP on defence. It is folly not to do so. It was, of course, right that we rolled back our defence spending at the end of the cold war, but the peace dividend was, in my view, entirely illusory, because new threats replaced the old threats. That will always be the case. In respect of defence policy, unpredictability is the only thing that is predictable. We should never forget that. We should never drop our guard; we should always be right at the forefront, as my constituents are every day, at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, for example, and at the Health Protection Agency's Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response. All the defence scientists and all the people who are prepared to lay down their lives for this country deserve the undying support, recognition and affection of our constituents and of every Member of this House.