Defence Spending
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. May I remind hon. Members that we need to conclude the debate by 3.30 pm to allow for the Front-Bench contributions? That means that we have about an hour, with six speakers in the Chamber at the moment. If each Member aims for about eight minutes, we will comfortably get there; otherwise the last few speakers will have their time severely squeezed. That would not be particularly fair, so I ask for co-operation.
Armed Forces (Service Complaints and Financial Assistance) Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Out of enormous respect to the right hon. Gentleman and bearing in mind that he is standing down at the next election, I have been a little generous on those points, but I hope that his one and a half pages of notes do not stretch to engaging in a full discussion, tempted by his hon. Friend’s question.
Mr Arbuthnot
In order to reassure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I can say that it is one and a half sentences, and my one and a half sentences relate to the 0.7% statutory commitment that we seem to be moving towards on international development. I approve of international development—I think it does us good, as well as the countries that benefit from improved education—but to have a statutory percentage to be spent on aid and not even a manifesto commitment on defence beggars belief, and we must put that right.
Defence Spending
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. We have four or five Members left to speak. Mr Brazier, do you wish to speak in the debate? I am sorry to ask, but it will affect my calculations.
Mr Brazier
I wish to speak if there is time, Madam Deputy Speaker, but as I did not put in to speak in advance, I will understand it if I am squeezed out by other people who did.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I will set the time limit at six minutes. You will probably get six minutes, Mr Brazier, but it might be a little less. I will advise you when we get there. There is now a time limit of six minutes on all speakers to allow time for the responses.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Mr Stewart, are you standing? The reason I ask is that you are on my list as wishing to speak, but I have not seen you standing. I want to make sure you get the opportunity to speak.
Mr Brazier
I have written a reply to that report because I do not agree with it, but all the report says is that there are extra costs associated with recruiting for the next year and a half until the new system is in place, and it also queries some of the figures the MOD has put forward, but it nowhere actually suggests that a man or woman who is employed only for 40 days a year could cost more than a regular soldier. It—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This debate finishes at 5 o’clock on the dot, and we have not yet heard from the Minister.
Defence and Cyber-security
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Despite the presence of the new clocks to aid Members in calculating how long they have been speaking, and despite the fact that Members have been asked to keep their speeches to 10 minutes or less, we are left with six speakers and only 40 minutes to go. There is now an eight-minute time limit and the clock will count it down for Members. It might be necessary to revisit the limit to ensure that every Member who has been sitting in the Chamber patiently is able to participate.
Armed Forces (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want some guidance regarding the question of where the money will come from following the loss of the short-selling case at the European Court of Justice. Will it come from estimates or otherwise? The Government are now obliged to pay all the costs and, despite predictions, the amount of money in question will be substantial. The Government’s case has been completely dismissed and they have had costs awarded against them. I just wonder where the money will come from.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
The hon. Gentleman poses his question as a point of order to the Chair and I suppose the direct answer is that I do not know. Thank goodness it is not a matter for the Chair. As the hon. Gentleman knows, it is not a point of order, but he is very thorough and assiduous in pursuing such matters. I say without fear of contradiction that he will have other opportunities—nay, that he will create other opportunities—to pursue his point, but that will not happen during today’s sitting.
I call Thomas Docherty to move the Second Reading of his private Member’s Bill.
Defence Police and Fire Pensions
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This is an Adjournment debate. Opposition Front-Bench Members cannot intervene from the Dispatch Box in an Adjournment debate. Interventions can be taken from Back Benchers.
Mr Reid
The review is to be presented to Parliament no later than 24 December, so time is short. The report will look at the impact of the Public Service Pensions Act 2013 on the health and well-being of defence police and firefighters, and at the ability of those over 60 to meet the strict fitness requirements that are needed for the important and dangerous job that they do. The report will also consider the consequences of early retirement for workers who are forced to retire early on health grounds because they cannot meet the stringent fitness requirements. It will also look at the likely cost to the taxpayer.
If the retirement age is 65 and significant numbers of personnel are forced to retire early on health grounds, both the taxpayer and the worker will lose out. The worker will lose out because they will not get the full pension that they expected; the taxpayer will lose out because the amount that has been paid into the pension pot will not cover the cost of the pension if it is paid out early.
Defence Reform Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Philip Hammond
Would my hon. Friend not accept, though, that there is no attempt to avoid scrutiny here? By indicating that I will accept the intention of our hon. Friends’ new clause 1 and legislate to require an annual independent report—not for a limited period, but as a permanent arrangement—we are in effect creating a mechanism whereby annually the House will receive a progress report on the state of the reserves, and I would expect the House to debate that progress report. That will provide the level of scrutiny that he seeks. What we cannot accept is the destabilisation of the programme that introducing an artificial hurdle—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Interventions need to be brief. The Secretary of State is an experienced Member of the House, and he knows that. Also, it would be good if he addressed the whole House, particularly the Chair, not just the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron).
Mr Baron
What the Secretary of State cannot get away from, however, is that this is not that sort of report. It would be the equivalent of a speech to the House followed by questions; it would not be subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny and a vote. We are talking about proper scrutiny of the plans. We know that things are not going well. Reservist recruitment targets are being badly missed, TA numbers are falling, there is a widening capability gap as a result and we have deviated from the original plan, as was just clearly confirmed by the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox); the original plan was to maintain the regulars until the reservists could take their place, but that has now been scrapped, and as we keep missing the reservist recruitment targets, the capability gap gets ever wider. These are legitimate questions that we in Parliament should be asking, and we need proper scrutiny of the answers the Government are giving. At the end of the day, that is all we are asking for.
As I have said, the report on its own is not enough, because we need proper scrutiny and a vote in the House, and if it does not bear scrutiny, perhaps that tells a wider story. A number of us, on both sides of the House, have tabled these amendments because we have deep-seated concerns that we believe have not been adequately addressed by the Government. I take no pleasure from saying this, but that includes the response to a well-attended general debate in the Chamber only a few weeks ago, when the Government could not muster one single vote in support of their position. One reason was that we put forward a series of questions, but very few, if any, answers came back.
Mr Baron
My proposal does not mention the regulars because the Bill is about the reservists. A couple of hon. Members have suggested motives for these proposals which I cannot agree with. The bottom line is that most of those regulars—this is my understanding and I am willing to stand corrected—have been disbanded in any case. Let me be clear about what my proposal says, because motives that I do not take kindly to are being attributed to it. The proposal is about saying that these plans are not working and we should take time, if only a brief amount of it, to scrutinise them properly to check for their viability and cost-effectiveness. That is the right thing to do—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has now made his point several times in one intervention, so I call James Arbuthnot.
Mr Arbuthnot
As I am coming on to discuss the reserves and why I think they are so important, I should perhaps declare an interest, in that my daughter is a second lieutenant in the Territorial Army. I think it is essential that we should change the reserves, boosting them, their numbers, their training and the equipment available to them. As a Defence Minister in the previous Conservative Government, I thought that that Government went too far in reducing the reserves, and I think that the previous Labour Government made the situation worse. It is high time that we begin again to build up and properly resource the reserves. I wish to pay particular tribute to two people, the first of whom is my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames). When he was Minister of State for the Armed Forces, he valiantly championed the Territorials and found himself fighting rather a losing battle.
Even more, I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury, who, as a Back Bencher—the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) made the point—has achieved more in supporting and championing the reserves than I or my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex did, when we were Ministers. My hon. Friend’s contribution to the reserves debate deserves an immediate dukedom. [Interruption.] Yes, a dukedom.
The reserves bring incredible value to this country. They bring vital specialist skills which are made contemporary by their civilian lives and they bring those skills to a changing world where they are essential. Crucially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury said, the reserves also tie the civilian world into the military world in a way that is becoming increasingly needed day by day. May I aim a shaft at my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State by saying that his clampdown on informal discussion between the military and politicians rather flies in the face of that need?
My second reason for supporting the Government is that wars are changing. We are increasingly less likely to see tank battles in Germany and increasingly more likely to be facing the emerging threats of cyber-attack, piracy and the covert destruction of our critical national infrastructure—the sort of things to which extra battalions of any particular regiment would not be the answer.
Vernon Coaker
As I have said on numerous occasions in this debate, in other debates and in the media, and as my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, we support the thrust of the reforms. We know about the withdrawal from Germany and that the Army will end operations in Afghanistan in 2014, but that does not alter the fact that we must understand that the downsizing of the Army and the Government’s stated policy mean that as the regular numbers downsize and reduce an uplift in reserve numbers should go alongside that. The central thrust of the whole debate is that we do not have confidence that the uplift in reserves will be sufficient to conform to the policy on the reduction in the number of regular forces. That is the central point.
First World War Commemoration
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I regret to say that time is against us this afternoon. Thirteen more hon. Members wish to speak so I am reducing the time limit to five minutes. I am loth to take it lower than that, but I would ask all hon. Members to give some consideration to their colleagues and try to make shorter, pithier speeches so that we can ensure that everybody is able to contribute. Perhaps hon. Members could also be sparing with their interventions unless they are really helpful to the debate.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I shall have to start the wind-ups at 4.48 and there are five speakers left. It is almost impossible. I am going to take the time limit to four minutes, but I implore hon. Members to make room for their colleagues to speak, too, by not necessarily using the full time, short as it is. The time limit is now four minutes, because I think that it is important that every Member gets to speak.
Armed Forces
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before I call the Minister, I want to give notice to all Back Benchers that there will be a six-minute time limit, which, depending on how the debate goes, it might be necessary to reduce in order to ensure that everybody who wants to participate can.
Nuclear Deterrent
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is there any way we can get a Minister from the Department for Education to the Chamber to explain the extraordinary attack in The Spectator blog this afternoon on the former Minister with responsibility for children, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), by senior sources at the Department, who have described him, among other things, as
“a lazy incompetent narcissist obsessed only with self-promotion”?
I have informed him that I am raising this matter on a point of order. Should not the Secretary of State come to the House to explain whether that vicious attack is his view of his hon. Friend and erstwhile ministerial colleague?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
The very short answer is no, I cannot. That is not a point of order—I think the hon. Gentleman knows that. A point of order has to be a matter for this Chamber, but he has his point on the record, and I am afraid he will have to be satisfied with that.
Jeremy Corbyn
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to intervene on a point of order, but we have just had a good and interesting debate on nuclear weapons, and the time obviously had to be reduced. Some hon. Members did not get in and others withdrew from the debate because they were not going to do so. Could we invite the Backbench Business Committee to look favourably on having another debate on the subject in the foreseeable future, because there is far greater parliamentary interest than was anticipated when the debate was called for by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and the number of hon. Members who supported him?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Mr Corbyn, I think you know that that is not a point of order either, particularly seeing as the Backbench Business Committee’s determination of business in the House is not a matter for the Chair. I am sure that when the Committee reads Hansard, it will take his remarks as an early bid, particularly if he has greater support for such a debate.
Mike Gapes
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that the Government will publish—at least internally—and consider their review on the alternatives to Trident, perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), who is in his place, will give the House a commitment that we will have the chance to debate the review in this House very soon.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Well, Mr Gapes, perhaps the Minister could do that, but I do not think he will. That is not a point of order. I would like to make progress with business, because I am sure there are not any other relevant or pertinent points of order to take this afternoon.