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Strategic Defence and Security Review

In the week before Armistice day, I, along with every other Member of this House, salute the memory of the fallen and extend my thoughts and sympathies to their families, as well as to those who have been wounded, to wish them a speedy recovery. I further pay a heartfelt tribute to the men and women of the British armed forces, wherever they are serving—sea, land or air—and most especially to those in Afghanistan; to the service families, who just by keeping the home fires burning do invaluable work for the nation; and to the civilian staff in the Ministry of Defence and elsewhere, who support our armed forces extremely well. I welcome the new shadow Secretary of State. I am delighted to tell him that I had the privilege of working on the Green Paper of his right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the former Secretary of State, which was valuable pre-thinking for some of the work that went into the SDSR. It was not the right hon. Gentleman's fault, but looking back perhaps the only mistake was that none of the aspirations that we discussed was in any way linked to financial considerations. They were really linked more to the question of capability. To that extent, the Green Paper did an important job, even though its conclusion at the end of the day was held to be rather unrealistic. I declare an interest, as the honorary colonel of the Bristol university officer training corps. One of their distinguished former officers, the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), now sits on the Front Bench, while the daughter of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Defence Committee, is one of their most glittering alumnettes. I want the Secretary of State to be particularly aware of the exceptional work of the OTC this summer, when they deployed to Canada at full unit strength to take part in Exercise Prairie Thunder, an extremely important training operation that, as I am sure the House is aware, put formed battle groups through their paces before operational deployments, most particularly to Afghanistan. The cadets were attached to the opposition force, which is much the most interesting and fun thing to do, and they performed magnificently. I raise that because I want the Secretary of State to congratulate the cadets on their efforts. They were extremely professional and did very well. I also want to thank the Ministry of Defence and all those responsible for helping, and to congratulate Lieutenant-Colonel Petersen and all those who arranged the exercise. I want the Secretary of State to understand that there is a wider utility to the university officer training corps, in supporting the regular Army. The exercise presented a tremendous opportunity for officer cadets to work with regular Army units, to everyone's advantage. I hope very much that he will remember that point when important decisions are taken about the OTCs, who make an important contribution to the military life of this country and provide an invaluable footprint at universities. When the Prime Minister announced the review, I welcomed especially the careful analysis done to support it, and I welcome most of the conclusions that have been reached. However, as the Prime Minister agreed on the day that the review was announced and as the Secretary of State said this afternoon, this is just the starting point for a much more fundamental transformation of defence in this country, so that in 10 years' time we will have a defence posture and capability capable of securing our national interests at home and abroad. An enormous body of much more detailed work now needs to be done on strategy, capability and all the rest. Let me take this opportunity also to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) on the excellent report that the Select Committee on Public Administration has produced on strategy. He has made an invaluable contribution, and the Government need to pay careful attention to the points that he has made. The purpose of the 2010 strategy review—and presumably that of all other reviews—is to achieve a strategy that matches ends, ways and means. The most immediate signal to come out of the SDSR is that the financial realities confronting the coalition Government—and the country—have forced them to make cuts that they would clearly much rather not have had to make. It is important to recognise that the SDSR has inevitably resulted in a real reduction in Britain's ability to undertake strategic power projection. The jarring gong of reality has sounded, and the truly dismal lessons of the past 13 years have had to be learned in a very brief period. As for the individual services, I would say this. First, I am afraid that I simply do not understand the stance of the Royal Navy, which would leave it unable to have anything but an absolutely minimal presence across the globe. That seems to be an appalling decision by the naval planners, and they will—mark my words—come always to regret it. Secondly, I simply believe that the Royal Air Force has got it wrong, while the Army has come up with a sensible, pragmatic and workable solution. However, will the Secretary of State tell me how he sees the development of the use of drone aircraft and who will be responsible for using them? What will be the configuration of the armoured regiments after the loss of the Challenger tanks? He is absolutely right to take those steps to retire—or, at least, to mothball—some of the Challenger tanks. What will the armoured regiments look like and what will their task be? I warmly welcome the treaty signed between the French and British Governments. In truth, this has been 40 or 50 years in the making, and only now have the Prime Minister and the President of the French Republic managed to bring to harbour a very difficult and extremely important step for this country and for France. I am quite clear that it was the right thing to do. The most important step and the real game changer is with regard to the nuclear issues. I strongly and warmly welcome the treaty—although I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex has some reservations—and I think it will be but a precursor to further and greater co-operation. I have three big points to make: first, on the reserves; secondly, on the need to maintain momentum around transformation; thirdly, on the Ministry of Defence headquarters. I ask the Secretary of State to continue to examine how better to use our reserves. We in the UK are out of kilter with all our major allies. About 40% of US combat capability is generated by reserves. For example, the US deploys the National Guard brigades to Afghanistan where, after training, they perform on par with regular forces. The National Guard flies fast jets, including the 5th generation F-22 Raptor. The UK has demolished the capability of reserves to deploy as combat units. They are now used as trickle reinforcements to regulars. This may work well in Afghanistan—part of our main effort, as the Secretary of State said—and may help to allay regular overstretch. It is, however, a completely unimaginative approach to defence as a whole and a gross waste of a magnificent potential asset. Much of our war-fighting capability is required at low readiness. As the House knows, this country faces no major external existential threat, and the opportunity to man much of it with expanded reservist capability and capacity clearly exists. Do we really need 300-plus fast jets at high readiness? No, we do not. Huge savings could be made, perhaps by placing two thirds of the force in reserve and building over the next 10 years the reserve capability to operate them. The Royal Air Force has a large alumni of brilliant fast-jet pilots, who would love to be better used. RAF regular pilots are reportedly restricted to 10 flying hours a month—fewer than US National Guard pilots. Do we really need to man the tanks and artillery required for general war fighting with expensive regulars who are needed for operations on other equipment in Afghanistan? No, we do not. It is a gross waste of money, and they should have got on and done that a long time ago. Again, those could be stored with small quantities of equipment used for training competent reserve brigades to be held at low readiness. The same could go for much of our amphibious shipping. The leadership of the UK armed forces, as I know the Secretary of State understands, has always shown a disappointing disregard for the real potential of a transformed Territorial Army, Royal Naval Reserve and Royal Air Force voluntary reserve. They need to be ordered to go away and undertake a root-and-branch review to re-balance armed forces to take proper benefit from this cost-effective and potentially powerful asset. I warmly welcome the steps taken for a review of our reserve forces, headed by General Houghton, and I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), who has down the years championed the TA in this House with great vigour, power and energy. My second theme is the need to continue to build momentum for transformation. As many have said, the strategic defence and security review is a beginning, not an end, but how can defence build momentum around the need to transform our armed forces without the catalyst of the SDSR? I was truly disappointed to hear the new permanent secretary in her first pronouncement on Monday say that the SDSR would be taken forward through the defence planning process. I have to tell the House that this is the same broken defence planning process that got the Ministry of Defence into the appalling mess that it is in now. This is about horse-trading, delaying, single-service rowing and general fudging of issues. What we need is real transformation. That game has definitely been started by the Secretary of State and it is clear that he has the will to see it through. I very much hope that he will do so, and get his way. That leads me to my third point about the MOD. The best four years of my life were spent as Minister of State for the Armed Forces. I loved every single minute of it; I worked with the most wonderful people. They are marvellous people, but the MOD has become a vast and cumbersome beast. It centralises all power and freezes all decision making. Absolutely no one is accountable and no one is ever held to account. Difficult decisions are nearly always avoided, and vested interests always prevail. For a start, the single services plans organisation needs to be turned upside down and a far more purple approach is required. There are more three-star officers and officials in the headquarters now than there were 20 years ago when our armed forces were two thirds larger. I would like to remind the House of what I said on 15 October 2009 in a debate on defence policy:"““How can anyone seriously justify the creation last year of the post of director general of strategy to serve in addition to the director general of policy, who did the job perfectly well when I was a Minister? How can anyone justify creating a commercial director general, a chief of defence materiel, a deputy chief of defence staff personnel and a director general of human resources? It is a crazy, absurd, overblown bureaucracy.””—[Official Report, 15 October 2009; Vol. 713, c. 503.]" That must be dealt with. The Secretary of State will have to move very quickly on this if he is to get his way on other matters.