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Strategic Defence and Security Review

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies), who, in the finest tradition of maiden speakers, was gracious towards his predecessor and agile in the promotion of the beauty and attributes of his constituency and constituents. He may not be aware of this, but we have a shared interest: the Nimrod aircraft, which is based in my constituency at RAF Kinloss. No doubt he will develop a strong interest in Nimrod and in all the other industries in his constituency. On the Nimrod link, and on this day, having heard about the 300th casualty in Afghanistan, I, too, pay tribute to all those brave servicemen and women who have made all the ultimate sacrifice—while not in any way losing sight of the pain and suffering of their families, 14 of whom are related to service personnel who died aboard Nimrod XV230, which was based at RAF Kinloss. The strategic defence review is long overdue, and it is correct for foreign policy, defence and security considerations to be the drivers of such an exercise. But, it is important that during the process we do not lose sight of achieving a balanced and fair defence footprint throughout the nations and regions of the UK. I make an appeal to Ministers on the Treasury Bench on that subject, because I shall return to it repeatedly. We cannot overlook or underplay the fact that the financial drivers behind this SDR are massive, and the consequences of decisions will be significant for many parts of the UK. We know that, because the Royal United Services Institute—RUSI—estimates a likely defence budget cut of between 10% and 15% over the next six years, and a 20% personnel cut over the same period. If that were applied in Scotland, it would result in 2,400 job losses. Many Members may not be aware that there are already fewer service personnel based in Scotland pro rata than there are in the defence forces of the Irish Republic. If RUSI's expected reduction is realised, Scotland will have fewer service personnel in real terms than the Irish Republic. That is not a surprise if we try to understand what has happened in recent years, but if we do not do so the SDR will run away with itself, leaving Scotland—and, incidentally, other parts of the UK—with such a denuded footprint that there will be very serious consequences. Since the previous SDR, the number of defence jobs in Scotland has gone down by about 10,000. That includes 1,880 fewer service personnel, 4,600 fewer civilian personnel and 4,000 fewer jobs associated with the defence sector. All those numbers come from the Ministry of Defence.