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Defence in the World

If I may take this liberty, Mr. Deputy Speaker, let me say what a pleasure it is to be called by you once again. You will possibly have a few more stints in the Chair. You are a worthy occupant of that Chair. You stood for Speaker, and you would have been a wonderful Speaker. There was much competition. As you pass out of the world of politics and into the other world, you will be missed by many in this Chamber. It is a pleasure to follow yet another of my colleagues from the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard), who was highly commended by the Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), who is not in his place. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) on her thoughtful, and indeed courageous, speech. It is more difficult to make a personal speech in this House, and she made a very personal speech. She brings a thoughtful touch to some of the issues that we face on the Defence Committee. Her remarks about the relationship between conflict and what those involved in conflict suffer, and have to deal with, are very timely just a few days after Combat Stress launched its 90th anniversary appeal. It is worth putting on record the fact that Ministers and Opposition spokesmen seem to be working together very effectively to address some of those issues. With 180,000 personnel having served in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past nine years or so, we can expect as a result some 8,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and 50,000 to 60,000 cases of mental illness involving people who have been exposed to conflict in those two countries. That is a very considerable challenge, to which I hope that she will have the opportunity to return in the Defence Committee in a future Parliament. I wish to return to the comments of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney about the vexed question of the role of the defence chiefs in the defence debate. They have extraordinary responsibilities, and they are placed in a very difficult position, under politicians who are necessarily political. I have enormous sympathy with what has been said about the need for the Select Committee to be able to operate effectively on the basis that we are being told the truth, and the whole truth. This is an issue that we need to address, but there are no instant solutions, because we do not want to politicise our armed forces; I agree with the hon. Member for Bridgend about that. One could argue that these people have been politicised because they have felt compelled to pursue a particular "line to take" as opposed to pursuing their own line, and I fully understand the perception of those on the Labour Benches that they have been politicised in the other direction for other reasons. We have to have a rational discussion about this problem, which arises from the subject that I am going to address—the state of the defence budget and the state of the Ministry of Defence—and relates fundamentally to the old story of the quart and the pint pot. All the problems arise because for a considerable period, decisions about the allocation of resources and priorities have been based on trying to produce more effect than we have been prepared to pay for. If we are to have a debate about defence in the world, it should be about our global role. The real question that lurks behind the earlier exchanges between Front Benchers is whether we can afford a global role. It is about money: the question is whether we allow this single fiscal crisis to relegate the UK for all time. In one matter we have no choice: rebalancing the public finances and reducing the annual deficit must be the first priority of the next Parliament. The strategic defence and security review, as I prefer to call it, must redefine the UK's strategic priorities, but in the context of the fiscal crisis that the next Parliament will inherit. The recent interventions of the chiefs of staff and former chiefs of staff are profoundly depressing, not because they betray division and dissension within government but because those people all seem to accept that massive cuts are inevitable. Let us thank them for one thing: they are confronting us with the truth, which this Government and the increasingly dysfunctional Ministry of Defence have increasingly been denying for years. I agree with the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney that there are many good people in the MOD, and there have been many good Ministers under this Government, but Ministers, civil servants and even senior serving military officers have become inured to the permanent state of crisis in the Department. The present state—crisis in the MOD—is now regarded as normal. However big the black hole in next year's budget, it can always be tided over. In that way, "normal" in the MOD has become more and more divorced from reality. That is what Government and Opposition must face as we plan for the future. The chiefs of staff are telling us that, as we hear about whether we should scrap this or that project, or even whole services, the truth is that the MOD is bust. It cannot balance its books, and its outgoings exceed its income. A larger and larger deficit of one sort or another has been rolled forward and accumulated. The choice is not whether we can maintain the status quo or find some savings and limit our global role for a while. The situation is far more serious. In defence, there is no status quo to defend. I am reminded of Ronald Reagan's quip that""the status quo is Latin for 'the mess we are in'"." That is an apt description. The status quo, or trying to muddle along for a few more years on the present basis, will simply not be an option. The crunch is now. The money in the MOD has run out now. An attempt merely to stand still financially will have dramatic consequences in the forthcoming review. The Royal United Services Institute recently published a chilling paper by Professor Malcolm Chalmers, and Doctors Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman of Chatham House have made the same analysis. Chalmers sets out how, even if the defence budget were maintained at present levels in real terms over the lifetime of the next Parliament, and assuming all the natural defence costs such as inflation and 1.5 per cent. annual unit cost growth, there would still have to be dramatic cuts in capability. He forecasts that the number of trained military personnel would have to fall by 8.5 per cent. from 175,000 today to 160,000 by 2016, and that ground formations would have to be cut from 97 to 89, major vessels from 57 to 52, and available aircraft from 760 to 700. Those are rough and ready calculations, but in fact capability would probably fall away faster than that. Fighting vehicles, helicopters, other aircraft and ships have been used so intensively on operations in recent years that their serviceable lives will inevitably be shorter. For example, in July 2008 the UK armed forces had 522 helicopters. According to parliamentary answers, the MOD projects that by 2020 there will be only 303—a cut of 42 per cent. That takes account of the 62 Future Lynx and 24 Chinook helicopters recently announced. What effect will that have on operational capability, and our global role? Defence could yet be in a far worse position, whoever wins the election. On the basis that the structural deficit must be halved in four years—that is what we have all voted for in this place—while health and overseas aid are ring-fenced budgets, the MOD, along with all other Departments, is in line for a cut of 11 per cent. between 2010 and 2016. According to Professor Chalmers, that will mean a 19 per cent cut in military personnel, to just 142,000, and cuts in ground formations from 97 to 79, in major vessels from 57 to 46, and in available aircraft from 760 to 615.