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Defence in the World

No, the hon. Gentleman will have his chance when he concludes the debate later. The point is that our defence industries are a huge strategic asset. Defence research and development has already been cut by 22 per cent. between 2002 and 2008. As a former defence Minister, Lord Salisbury, has remarked, we are eating the seedcorn of the industry's future. The defence industry—including in Liberal Democrat seats such as Yeovil—currently employs 300,000 people. It exports between £4 billion and £10 billion each year, and we still lead the world in key technologies. The UK is the second largest defence exporter—second only to the US—with around 20 per cent. of global defence exports, but we will soon be overtaken by others, even the Chinese, if we contemplate continuing cuts in research and development. A strategic, diplomatic and economic asset will be destroyed unless we address the shortcomings of the defence budget. The debate between the defence chiefs about what to cut misses the point. The big choices facing us are what should be our global role for the next decade and beyond, and what are the potential costs and benefits of that role. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary told RUSI last week:""We"—" the Conservatives—""have not waited thirteen years to return to office simply to oversee the management of Britain's decline"." I suspect that the Secretary of State, whom I welcome back to his place on the Front Bench, rather shares that view. I am sure that he did not take on his job to oversee the management of Britain's decline. There is the answer to the Secretary of State and his challenge earlier, but what do we mean by maintaining a "global role"? Yes, the UK is a member of the UN, NATO, the EU, the G8, the G20 and the Commonwealth, but Germany, Italy, France and Spain do much of what we do in the diplomatic sphere, so why must we accept the expense of our particular global role? For British prosperity and security, the UK's global role is not a lifestyle choice; it is an imperative. It is not merely an expression of our values, but it defines who we are as a nation. Our geographical and historical inheritance has granted us unique capabilities and advantages that few other nations have, and it is in the interests of all free nations as well as our own that we use them for our and their benefit. How would Europe or India or the US have turned out today without Britain's global role in the past? In the past, there was nothing inevitable about the abolition of slavery or the defeat of fascism or the facing down of communism, and in the future there is nothing inevitable about the continuing spread of democracy and free trade—yet we depend upon democracy and free trade utterly for our own prosperity and security. We must play our role in the world simply because we can—unlike almost every other nation. That role reflects our values and our interests. I pay tribute to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire). How can we play our role in conflict prevention unless we have the means to do so? In today's world, overpopulation, shortage of food, competition for resources, the risk of environmental catastrophe, mass migration, accelerating technological change, nationalism and extremism are all on the rise. These are factors now aggravated by global recession. Is this the moment to substitute hard power for the myth of soft power? Advocates of soft power are those who have decided to rely on a free ride on the hard power of others, including our own. Can we, too, risk opting out of our global role? Which nation would usurp our role as America's most influential and enduring ally? Are we to encourage the US to become unilateralist? Who would protect our shipping from the Somalian pirates? Who will win the friendship of the oil-rich Gulf states if we abandon them? Who will invest in NATO if we disinvest? Which other nation or nations would gain from our retreat? Will they promote freedom and democracy, or will it be something much darker? Free trade, democracy and human rights, and international peace and security are mutually beneficial for all peoples and nations, but sustained diplomacy to promote those values must be underpinned ultimately by the threat of resort to force. The purpose of military capability is not because we intend to fight wars. We cannot afford to fight so many wars as we have in recent years, but we must always remain able to deter them and to be prepared for the unexpected. Military capability is not some theoretical concept. We need the new smaller surface warships, or how can we patrol the many parts of the world where we need to deter aggression or give humanitarian aid? The great strength of the Navy is its ability to loiter, perhaps unseen over the horizon, but still exerting a presence nevertheless. We need more drones to track terrorists, to support ground troops and to provide intelligence. Incidentally, the technology brought to bear to protect our armed forces in Afghanistan gives the lie to the idea that a low-tech insurgency can be met by low-tech armed forces in response. Fast jets do not just protect our own airspace but our ground forces, and a surgical strike capability is a massive sub-nuclear tactical deterrent. Flexible, deployable capability gives us that indefinable and indispensable quality that a powerful nation needs—it is called "influence" and it takes decades, not years, to create such capabilities, and it would take decades to recreate them if we gave them up just because of a short-term fiscal crisis. How much would it cost to maintain those capabilities? Defence spending in 2008-09 was £36.4 billion, or 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product, including the costs of operations. A phased programme to increase defence spending by up to £7 billion to £10 billion a year, plus inflation over five years, would raise the share of GDP to nearer 3 per cent.—a wholly reasonable peacetime share of national income. With savings of perhaps £3 billion in procurement and overheads and a moratorium on discretionary operations, we could maintain a broad spectrum of capabilities and retain the UK's global role. I believe that that would be outstanding value for money. That is the choice. What we cannot afford to continue to do is to fight wars not just with a peacetime budget, but with a peacetime mentality. Yet, as the papers produced by RUSI and Chatham House show, that is what this Government are guilty of doing. Public spending choices in the next Parliament will be the toughest since the 1930s. We must not repeat the mistakes with defence that our grandfathers made then. Can we afford our global role? The question we should be asking is this: can we afford to lose it?