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Strategic Defence and Security Review

My hon. Friend makes an extremely vivid and important point. We can bet our bottom dollar that there would have been a frightfully good reason for doing it—it should have been blown out of the water on day one. All this has created the mess we are in, with a £38 billion overspend. One of the most important jobs of the Secretary of State and the Administration is to build an agile strategic military headquarters and Department of State which are able to respond effectively to the rapidly changing environment of the 21st century. That does not exist in the Ministry of Defence at present, and it must be created, which will mean considerable decentralisation. The front-line commanders-in-chief need to be given the tools and the space that they need to do the job. As has been said, they need to be allowed to get on with it, and to stop being micro-managed by civil servants in Whitehall. I am very pleased that the Secretary of State has engaged Lord Levene and a team of admirable and extremely experienced experts from the private sector to assist in this task, but if they are to drive the huge changes that are needed, senior officers and officials must recognise that what they have built has failed catastrophically, and must change. They must understand the need to transform. The senior military and officials need to own the change themselves, and they need to drive it forward. It will be a complete and fundamental change of culture, but it must be achieved. Let me end by reading out a quotation that I have read out during almost every speech on defence that I have made in the House for years and years. It is a remarkable speech made by Lord Wavell, which the House should bear in mind as all these changes are being made, and as they think about the men and women at the sharp end—the people who end up having to deal with decisions, sometimes very bad decisions, made in the Ministry of Defence. Lord Wavell said:"““in the last resort, the end of all military training, the settling of all policy, the ordering of all weaponry and all that goes into the makings of the armed forces is that the deciding factor in battle will always be this. That sooner or later, Private so-and-so will, of his own free will and in the face of great danger, uncertainty and chaos, have to advance to his front in the face of the enemy. If all that goes wrong, after all the training, the intensive preparation and the provision of equipment and expenditure, the system has failed.””" Despite everything, the system has not failed. The House needs to remember, in the midst of the sometimes idiotic and petty political arguments that separate us in all parts of this House of Commons, that these young men and women are doing something really extraordinary, and doing it at great personal danger and risk to themselves. Ministers must never forget, in this great talk of strategy, this plethora of change and all that will go on at the top, with headquarters being got rid of and people being shuffled around, that they must be able to continue to deliver the really remarkable people who are able to do the job for which all this money is spent. That must be kept at all times in the forefront of the minds of the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State.