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Defence in the World

I enjoyed the speech by the shadow Defence Secretary, the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox). It was wide-ranging, and included a lot of material that I have read in documents from the Royal United Services Institute and others. I did not quite understand his little rant at the end—this is not a Second Reading debate, and there are not many Members in the Chamber, although most of us are interested in security and defence issues. He was sufficient unto his moment, however, and I wish him well. The debate is about defence in the world, and my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary focused a bit narrowly, if I may say so, on Afghanistan. I do not entirely blame him, because the attempts to change the Chilcot inquiry evidence given by the Prime Minister, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Iraq conflict was launched, were fairly unworthy. I was genuinely surprised and concerned by the proncunciamentos from certain former senior officers, including chiefs of staff who are now Members of the other place. They have a right to speak—[Interruption.] Some say that they have a duty to speak, but if our soldiers decide to become party political animals when they retire, the relationship between the military and the Crown might alter, which should give us some cause for reflection. That is all that I would say. I asked the House of Commons Library about the finances, and I have listened to the conflicting points of view that have been expressed today. I was told that the defence budget went up by 31 per cent. between 1997 and 2003—by 17 per cent. in real terms, which is about £7 billion extra on top of the steadily inflation-plus growing defence budget. I have never been able to understand why the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the time is blamed for the distribution of that money, having given our military many extra pounds and pennies. We have 140 officers at the rank of general costing £6 million-plus leading our armed services across the Army, Air Force and Navy. We have a very good Ministry of Defence senior executive capability, who are also handsomely paid. It is surely their job, having been given the extra money, to decide how it should be spent. If Iraq and Afghanistan came de novo blindside, and had never happened before in recent military experience, it would be difficult to adapt, but we fought a war in Iraq in 1990. Our soldiers, who were stationed in the region, were knocking on Saddam Hussein's door for several months before the invasion, and we have been in Afghanistan for nine years. On the whole, when we make a comparison with the beginnings of other conflicts, whether of the first or second world war, or other major military campaigns throughout our history, we can see that we begin poorly and finish well. Our armed forces adapt very, very quickly and invent new techniques. I am not a military expert and I always defer to Opposition Members who have been serving officers, but I am at a loss to explain why all these generals, admirals and vice-marshals have been incapable between 2001 and today, or between 2003 and today, of restrategising and reprioritising. We have many more admirals than we have ships on deployment overseas. We have a large number of major-generals. I sat next to a major-general from the Irish Guards in a second-class compartment on the train from Doncaster last week. I do not mind how MPs travel or whom they meet on the train, but it is a rum show when a major-general from the Irish Guards has to travel on an off-peak cheap-day standard class return ticket to make modest economies for the military. I do not want to focus on Afghanistan. Instead, I shall widen out to other geo-strategic concerns. The hon. Member for Woodspring spoke about our enemies and adversaries, but he did not define them. I tried to tempt him to say whether China might be one in future. I agree entirely with his analysis. We want a liberal, friendly China, but undoubtedly the extraordinary rate of increase in its military prowess is very powerful. The hon. Gentleman spoke warmly of President Sarkozy. We have seen some interesting remarks from the shadow Chancellor and the Leader of the Opposition about Mr. Sarkozy and his height. The shadow Defence Secretary would never be accused of heightism, but he cannot seriously engage with France and appeal to France to be our ally while spending all his time attacking every article of French defence policy. The French presidency, which takes over the European Union when the Spanish presidency finishes this July, wants to see the establishment of a new intervention force under PSC. I can see the eyes of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen glazing over at that bit of jargon. Now that the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) has left, let me tell them that PSC stands for permanent structure co-operation under the Lisbon treaty and is a very significant development in our common approach to European defence activity. The French presidency also wants greater contributions to the financing of European security and defence operations. Those are two examples of what France stands for—in other words, more common European authority and more money for Europe.