---

Foreign Affairs and Defence

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), who made a deeply sincere and moving speech that reminded us all what heroism is all about. This debate started with an outstanding speech by my right hon. Friend the new Foreign Secretary and there have been a number of maiden speeches, including excellent ones by my hon. Friends the Members for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), and the best maiden speech I think I have ever heard, from my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). I look forward to the winding-up speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who I am delighted to see is our new Secretary of State for Defence, and I am particularly pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Mr Luff) is sitting on the Front Bench in his role as a Defence Minister. He is part of the strong Ministry of Defence team, which will be grappling with what, frankly, is a nightmare in the strategic defence and security review. I cannot think of a better team to do it, but it will face a huge mismatch: the resources available have dropped from 5.5% of national GDP in the 1980s to 2.2% today—a fall of 60%—at a time when in Afghanistan we are involved in the bloodiest war since Korea. Moreover, the grim news coming out of Korea reminds us that, at the other end of the military spectrum, nuclear proliferation among some deeply unattractive countries is a real threat. There is a temptation to focus on Afghanistan. As the representative of a garrison city proud to be home to the Argylls, to whom we gave the freedom of the city recently, and the 3rd Battalion The Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment—a Territorial Army battalion—nobody needs to remind me how important it is to support our troops in Afghanistan in every way that we can. However, it is important to remember that very few of the wars in which we have participated over the past 100 years have been expected: 48 hours before the invasion of the Falklands nobody expected that war to take place; less than six months before the first Gulf war, the Ministry of Defence had categorically ruled out any possibility of deploying armoured troops outside the NATO area; and hours before 9/11 anyone who had said that we would be involved in a long-term conflict in Afghanistan would, to put it mildly, have been thought mad. That is why we must maintain a full range of capabilities and not allow the new strategic defence review to reshape our armed forces simply around the immediate pressing needs of Afghanistan. How then are we to square the impossible mismatch between keeping a full range of military capabilities and the fact that, although the Treasury team has done well in protecting the defence budget so far, nobody believes that extra money will be available? I put it to the House that that cannot be done without tackling the spiralling cost of manpower. As the son of a Regular Army officer, I have, over the years, campaigned for better treatment for the wounded, for better housing for the armed forces, for the protection of their pensions and for a range of allowances, and although I welcome every word of what we have said on the military covenant—I am sure that we will deliver it—we must recognise that the current model is close to being broken. Most major countries regard defence as an activity of the nation and, although their professional armed forces form an important component, it is not the only one. We have many reasons to be proud of our armed forces, but we must consider how others do things. There are two main models: most European countries, apart from France, use a conscription-based model, so most people pass through the armed forces, as do Russia and China. Alternatively, other English-speaking countries, which are fighting alongside us in Afghanistan, use a balanced mixture of regular and volunteer reserve forces, as we always used to do, including in both world wars. Almost alone, we are heading towards having almost all-professional armed forces, and that is extremely expensive. Of course we must look after them in every way that we can, but the costs of pay, allowances, pensions, housing and so on make such an approach very expensive. Such an approach also means having a huge divide between the armed forces and a civilian world that rightly looks with great favour on the armed forces but understands little about them, and ensures that there is no framework for expansion. Almost half of America's pilots, including a third of their fast jet fighter squadrons, are in the Air Guard or US Air Force Reserve, and America's naval reserve has an aircraft carrier, whereas our Royal Auxiliary Air Force has no fighter pilots, let alone squadrons, and the Royal Naval Reserve has no vessels. Even the shrinking and hard-worked Territorial Army represents a much smaller proportion of ground forces than do its English-speaking counterparts: the figure is a quarter compared with nearly half for Australia and Canada and much more than half for America. This review offers the opportunity to reconnect our splendid professional forces with outside thinking from the civilian world, to retain unutilised capabilities that would otherwise become unaffordable in the volunteer reserves and to keep a capacity to expand in order to face that unexpected conflict that may come around the corner. That does not have to mean a compromise in standards. The highest scoring tank regiment in the first Gulf war was the 4th US Marine Division Reserve Tank Battalion from Seattle, all volunteer reservists. British units can do it too. My former regiment, 21 Special Air Service, had a squadron in Afghanistan last year. I am not giving away any secrets by saying that they got two military crosses—again, they are volunteer reservists. On land, important capabilities, such as much of our heavy armour and artillery, could be transferred to the Territorial Army. In the air, a fast jet fighter pilot costs £4 million to train. In America, he would be likely to go on into the Air Guard; in Britain, all that money is burnt when he ceases his service. At sea, we are reliant for the protection of our ports on an anti-mining capability tied up in 16 vessels and 16 regular crews. Why do we not have volunteer reserve crews so that we can work them round the clock if there is a serious mining threat to our ports? All these things can be done, but they require imagination and good quality volunteers and leadership. Sadly, the word is that neither the Royal Air Force nor the Royal Navy are considering any radical options at all. Perhaps worst of all, the Army, the one service that has a volunteer reserve of some size, was, at least until the election, considering an absurd model of replacing the current structure with, instead of Territorial Army units, a pool of manpower bolted on to regular units with no identity, no premises of their own and no opportunities for command at regimental level. That is a structure that is most unlikely to attract high-quality men and women willing, at the end of a full week spent on a demanding job, to train and give up their time to serve their country. Let us remember that they serve, too: 16 Territorials and one air reservist have been killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past seven years. We need to address this issue. Over the time that I have been in Parliament, I have always spoken up for the regular forces, but I have also come to believe that we cannot continue with the current model. We are out of line with all our English-speaking counterparts and it is not affordable. There is no prospect whatsoever of the combined staff in the MOD considering these solutions. They will do so only if Ministers, and I have the greatest confidence in the new team, make them do so and bring people into the teams—one possible name is Richard Holmes, a former director of reserves and cadets and a very distinguished military academic—who are willing to do so. We will be reconstituting the all-party reserve forces group next month and we will be playing a small role on the outside. The whole House is rightly proud of our professional armed forces, but we should be proud of our volunteer reserves, too. We must recognise that the current virtually all-professional model is close to bust and that unless we shift towards a better balanced structure, our ability to respond to the unexpected threat will disappear altogether.