Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Nick Harvey
We have started a relationship with the private sector, and there has been an initial meeting with private sector leaders at Downing street. It is essential that we have the maximum co-operation between the private and public sectors, because many of the networks on which public services depend are managed under contract by the private sector. It is also essential that there is good international engagement with our allies, and there will be new memorandums of understanding with some of them shortly.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
In the light of allegations that I gather will be made tonight on the “Panorama” programme that the News of the World was hacking into mobile phones and computers used by the Army in Northern Ireland, will the Minister ensure that the security of mobile telephones used by the Army will be protected from newspapers as well as from other agents?
Nick Harvey
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and we will do everything we can to ensure the maximum security of all our communication methods.
Military Covenant
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr Fox
In a moment.
There are three charges that still hang around the necks of Labour when it comes to defence, the armed forces and the military covenant. In 13 years of power, their response to equipping our forces was often too little, too late; their spending priorities were wrong; and there was too much waste and inadequate budgetary control.
We have learned from the Chilcot inquiry—an independent inquiry—that it was purely for political reasons that the Labour Government failed to order enough equipment, including body armour, for troops in the lead-up to the Iraq war. They did not want to send the message that they were preparing for war, and the result was under-prepared, under-equipped forces sent into conflict.
In 2006, they failed to send enough troops and equipment into Helmand province and were painfully slow at providing more capable armoured vehicles to counter improved explosive devices. That led to a number of high-profile subsequent resignations from the Army, as has been pointed out. They went 12 years without a defence review, even though, according to numerous former Defence Ministers and service chiefs speaking at the Chilcot inquiry, the 1998 SDR was never properly funded. They overstretched our armed forces by fighting two wars on a peacetime budget.
Dr Fox
I will give way in a moment.
The Labour Government overspent and overheated an equipment programme that contributed to a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget. In Labour’s final year in power, the MOD saw a record overspend of £3.3 billion in the equipment programme. In fact, we inherited an equipment programme that has its top 15 projects £8.8 billion over budget and a cumulative delay of 32 years. When we were fighting two wars, their idea of commitment to defence and our armed forces was to appoint four different Defence Secretaries in four years, including one who served simultaneously as Defence Secretary and Secretary of State for Scotland.
Labour left a situation in which 42% of service single living accommodation in the UK, and 52% of overseas single living accommodation, was in the worst grade on a four-point scale—although in a speech that lasted half an hour, the shadow Defence Secretary did not once mention the quality of accommodation for our armed forces.
With all that going on, Labour Defence Secretaries spent almost £250,000 on modern art for the Ministry of Defence. As former Chief of the General Staff General Sir Mike Jackson said in his autobiography, they
“preferred to spend on abstract art money which might otherwise have directly benefited soldiers and their families. It may seem a small point, but to me it was so indicative of the cultural divide in the MoD”.
The list goes on. In this country, we judge politicians not by their words but by their actions. The Labour Government had 13 years to put matters right; we have had nine months so far, and I will set out what we have done already.
Dr Fox
Not at the moment.
I have set out a number of areas where the Government have already acted in just nine months. Some £61.6 million has been allocated in the current financial year for the upgrade of, and improvement programmes for, service accommodation. That will include upgrading some 800 service family homes to the top standard, with a further 4,000 properties benefiting from other improvements such as new kitchens and bathrooms.
Of course, in the current tight financial situation priorities must be established. My welfare priority will be mental health. We have accepted in full the mental health plan for service personnel and veterans set out in the report by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). That will provide a range of improvements in mental health care, including increasing the number of mental health professionals from mental health trusts looking out for veterans and introducing structured mental health surveillance inquiries into routine service medical examinations and all discharge medicals.
The Government are committed to improving health care for our service personnel and have committed an additional £20 million in the SDSR for this purpose, part of which will be used to deliver further enhanced military mental health care services. I believe this must be our priority because it is all too easy to see the physical wounds of war, but the unseen mental wounds of war have too often gone undiagnosed and untreated, and all our society demands that we do not allow a mental health time bomb to be created.
Chris Bryant
I want to ask the Secretary of State about 160 Brigade. As he knows, it is the Welsh brigade based in Brecon. Secret discussions have been going on over the last few weeks about collapsing the brigade and joining it with the West Midlands, which would mean there was no longer a Welsh brigade. Can he give an absolute assurance that that will not happen?
Dr Fox
As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are ongoing discussions in the armed forces, but as he has heard me say on a number of occasions, I am very keen that we have United Kingdom armed forces and that we maintain the footprint as widely as possible across the UK. If he wants to talk to me directly about that, I shall be happy to meet him.
Labour’s legacy means that there is not enough to do all that we would like to do, but we can make a start. None of it alone will instantly rebuild the covenant, but it is a step in the right direction. In the difficult economic circumstances the coalition Government have inherited, where all parts of society are making sacrifices, repairing the covenant will not be straightforward. The armed forces are subject to the difficult decisions we have had to make on pay, pensions and allowances across Government.
Neither the Prime Minister nor I came into politics to see cuts in the armed forces, but we have to deal with the reality of the legacy. Every Department has to make a contribution to deficit reduction and the Ministry of Defence can be no exception. We have to put the economy on the right track for the sake of our national security.
The coalition agreement recognises that we have to do more to ensure that our armed forces and their families have the support they need, and are treated with the dignity they deserve. Some of what we need to do will cost money, and with budgets squeezed, we may not be able to go as quickly as we want, but we will make progress where we can. The recent report on the covenant commissioned by the Prime Minister from the military historian Professor Hew Strachan suggests a number of ways to move forward. We are implementing some of them now and will announce in the near future the other recommendations we support.
As Members know, the military covenant was conceived as an expression of the mutual obligations that exist between the nation, the Army and each individual soldier. In consultation with service charities and others, the Government are rewriting the covenant as a new tri-service document—the armed forces covenant—which expresses the enduring, general principles that should govern the relationship between the nation, the Government and the armed forces community as a whole. It will include all three services, veterans, family members and local communities, thereby broadening the scope of the covenant. We shall publish it in the spring.
The reserve forces form an intrinsic part of the UK’s defence capability and thus the armed forces community. The Ministry of Defence is responsible for ensuring that reservists are treated fairly and with respect, and that they are valued. In the drafting of the armed forces covenant, reserves have been considered equally alongside regulars. That will set the tone for Government policy aimed at improving the support available for serving and former members of the armed forces, and the families who carry so much of the burden, especially, as we remember today, in the event of injury or death.
Armed Forces Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Dr Fox
No, not as part of the Bill. However, while the Bill sets out the framework for the covenant, there are ample opportunities in Parliament to change any of the rules and regulations that relate to the armed forces in several ways, through the usual procedures available to the House.
As the House will know, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has spoken of the Government’s desire to enshrine the covenant in law. We have been considering the best way to do that. Our starting point is that the armed forces covenant is fundamentally a moral obligation on the Government, the nation and the armed forces. It is an agreement between the armed forces and the whole nation, not just the Government. It can never be defined by a host of rules and regulations, designed to tell everyone exactly what to do in every circumstance. Certainly, as I have just said to my hon. Friend, when rules need to be changed, we will do so. However, generally the people of this country know how service personnel should be treated, and our task is to create the right framework for that to happen.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that I entirely agree with him about the moral imperative behind the covenant. Some 9% of the armed forces personnel come from Wales, yet only 2% of the armed forces personnel are based in Wales, and that is one of the things that makes it more difficult to have continuity of care for those people once they have left the armed forces. Will the Secretary of State look carefully at basing more of the armed forces personnel in Wales so that that continuity can be maintained, and how will he ensure that the relationship with the Welsh Assembly Government, who have responsibility for health care, education and housing, is maintained?
Dr Fox
I will come on to the issue of the devolved bodies in a moment, but the hon. Gentleman is trying to get me on to the basing debate again. The primary duty of the Government is to ensure that the armed forces are laid out across the United Kingdom in the way that is most beneficial to the defence of the country. However, if the hon. Gentleman is looking for a champion of the cause of the armed forces being tied to the whole concept of the Union, he does not have to look much further. I believe that as we have units that represent the whole of the United Kingdom, we should look, where possible, to ensure that we have basing across the whole of the United Kingdom; but, as I say, the primary responsibility of the Government is to ensure that bases are allocated in a way that makes the greatest sense in terms of the wider defence of the country.
The armed forces covenant is of such importance that it needs to be brought properly to the attention of Parliament. We propose to do this not through long and complex legislation, but through the mechanism of an annual forces covenant report. The relevant clause in the Bill will require me to lay a report before the House every year on the effects that membership of the armed forces has on service people. I have no doubt that the House will wish to take notice of that annual report and undertake whatever scrutiny it considers appropriate.
Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
It is an honour and a privilege to contribute to the debate. I begin by declaring my interest as a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces and as a serving commissioned officer in the Territorial Army.
It is fascinating to consider the history of why we are discussing this matter today as it dates back to the 1688 Bill of Rights, under which it is effectively against the law to have a standing army without the consent of Parliament. Given that history, it is a particular honour to speak on the matter today. However, it is also an honour to do so as a member of the armed forces affected by this Bill. However, because it sits uncomfortably with some that members of the regular armed forces are not allowed to sit as Members of Parliament while members of the reserved forces are, it is not an honour I intend to abuse today.
My experience has shown that members of the armed forces are very interested in politics, but they are not interested in party politics. When I wear a uniform, I always pride myself on being strictly apolitical and I intend to continue that today. Perhaps the test of my speech will be that, when read, it will seem as though it could have been spoken by a Government or Opposition Member.
I welcome the Bill because, as the Secretary of State said, it is in many ways a tribute to the previous Government for the manner in which they put the Armed Forces Act 2006 through Parliament. The fact that the Bill is mainly a tidying-up measure is testament to that, although clause 2 on the military covenant—I will come to that later—is very important. I therefore give credit to the previous Government.
There are, however, a few anomalies even though the 2006 Act attempted to tidy them up. In particular, there is the matter of military law being applied across the three services. I said that I am a Member of Parliament who is also a serving member of the armed forces and, to my knowledge, three other hon. Members also serve in the reserve forces. It may be of interest to the House that, as I stand here today, I am subject to military law as a commissioned officer in the Territorial Army. However, one of our colleagues, who merely through rank is not a commissioned officer, is not subject to military law as a serving Member of Parliament. That is an anomaly. All four of us have been mobilised and have been on operational service, and we all become subject to military law when that happens. It might seem a minor point but whether someone is subject to military law when they go to and from training in the Territorial Army is relevant.
I shall give another simple example of an anomaly before I get into the detail of the Bill. Over recent weeks, there have been calls in the House that, as part of the military covenant, we should have some form of medal to allow members of the armed forces to show that they are in the armed forces. The Veterans Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan) has said that that should be subject to review. I do not think it should be subject to review; I simply do not think it should happen. If hon. Members want to argue that point, I am happy to debate the matter. My case is fairly typical in that have completed three operational tours and have been awarded three medals over 23 years. In addition, I have a Queen’s golden jubilee medal, which was effectively given to me for being a member of the armed forces, and a long-service and good conduct medal—or the Territorial decoration as it was called then.
My point is that such medals are awarded simply for serving in the armed forces and I am not convinced that giving people more medals simply for being a part of the armed forces is necessarily a good thing. However, it is an anomaly that, in the Territorial Army, both officers and soldiers can get what is now the volunteer reserves service medal while, in the regular Army, only soldiers are allowed to get a long-service and good conduct medal. It seems that officers do not receive that medal simply because their good conduct is taken for granted. That is another anomaly in which the House might be interested.
Chris Bryant
I pay tribute to the non-partisan way in which the hon. Gentleman is advancing his arguments. I have no medals—the closest I ever got was a Blue Peter badge. He is referring to the anomalies. An anomalous situation for many armed forces families is because those who are killed in action all come into the UK through one of two different airfields, there have often been very long waits for a proper post-mortem. That was one of the problems we tried to rectify through the creation of the post of chief coroner. Previously, families had to wait a very long time before they could have closure in relation to the death of their loved one. Does he agree that the Government are wrong to be abolishing that post and that it would be better for armed forces families if we were to keep it?
Mark Lancaster
I would have to consider that matter in detail. I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that perhaps he should volunteer to sit on the Committee—I certainly will do so—and we can then explore the issue in greater detail. That is probably a sensible way forward, and it will be interesting to see whether he volunteers to do that.
Clause 2 deals with the military covenant and that matter has already been mentioned in the debate. The Royal British Legion—I am proud to be vice-president of the Olney branch—has raised concerns, and the Secretary of State has promised to consider them and, indeed, deal with them. It is perfectly reasonable to expect the role of the external reference group to continue in some form or another. That is something else I expect we can explore in Committee.
We have talked mainly about the three principal areas of health care, education and housing. In the previous Parliament, I was proud to serve on the Select Committee on Defence under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), when we looked at the issue of the education of service families. I am delighted that the Government have introduced some of our recommendations and we should continue to consider that matter. I am pleased that an annual report will be presented to Parliament. [Interruption.] When I referred to the Government, the former Veterans Minister, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), said from a sedentary position that it was the previous Government. I am actually being apolitical and mean the government of the land.
There has been some concern that perhaps the Government’s commitment to the military covenant does not go far enough and that the relationship between the armed forces and the Government should be enshrined in black and white. My personal feeling is that it is not important what is in black and white for the lawyers to argue over; what is important is how the covenant has been interpreted by successive Governments. I shall give one example. After the introduction of joint personnel administration—the new payment computer system in the Army—there has been a problem with some junior ranks in the British Army being effectively overpaid for a number of months. That has amounted to a sizeable sum for some individuals. I do not think any fair-minded person would suggest that that money should not be paid back; it is an overpayment and we would all expect to pay it back. However, the true test of the covenant is how the money is paid back. It should not have to be paid back in a single lump sum in one pay cheque; those concerned should be allowed to pay the money back over time. That is just one example of how the application of the covenant, and not what appears in black and white, is important.
To be honest, soldiers are quite cynical about government. They feel that any covenant would always be interpreted in the Government’s favour. I hope that the Opposition will take that point in the spirit it is intended because it is simply an objective statement of fact.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
It is a pleasure to follow such an informed speech from a person who is well qualified to deliver the points that he made. I am not from a military background, but am a great respecter of the military services, as we all are. I am a long-standing member of the Royal British Legion, but I do not know what that makes me.
Mr Llwyd
Yes, quite right. We all welcome the good work of the Royal British Legion.
The Bill is important for many reasons. I am pleased that the need to bolster the military covenant is recognised. For some years, I have campaigned for widespread recognition of the welfare needs of veterans of the armed forces. The Bill makes integral amendments to the way in which our armed forces function, especially in disciplinary matters. I will focus on veterans’ welfare, which is principally the concern of clause 2, and outline some suggestions on how that clause can be improved. If I have time, I shall speak briefly about clauses 9 to 11, which concentrate on preliminary testing for alcohol and drugs in the forces.
The Bill marks a significant breakthrough in the championing of veterans’ rights. For several years, I have worked to raise awareness in this place and beyond of the ordeal suffered by many vulnerable members of the armed forces after they are discharged. I published a paper in January 2010 that recommended increasing the support available to veterans of the armed forces. I currently have the privilege of sitting on an inquiry panel commissioned by the Howard League for Penal Reform, which aims to uncover why a high percentage of veterans enter the penal system. The inquiry is chaired by Sir John Nutting QC, and will make recommendations to Government later this year on how to prevent further offending and to make improvements. I chair a parliamentary group that comprises representatives of the justice trade unions, relevant third sector organisations, parliamentarians and concerned individuals, which looks into the problem of veterans in prison. That group will publish a list of recommendations on tackling this mounting problem in the first quarter of this year. I will give voice to a number of its recommendations this evening.
The reasons why veterans are over-represented in the criminal justice system are complex, but the root cause is often the social estrangement that is experienced by susceptible veterans when they lose the ready-made support network of their Army colleagues. Clause 2 unlocks the opportunity to discuss how we can improve the way in which public services are administered to veterans. As I shall argue, improving and streamlining the way in which such services are offered to veterans could drastically reduce the number who fall into difficulties later in life.
As is clear, work is being done to promote this issue. The fact that we are discussing a Bill on the Floor of the House that touches on this concern confirms the traction that it has gained over the past 12 or 18 months. I was gladdened to see that the matter had gripped the political mindset enough to become a major manifesto issue for all parties at the last general election. Although forces charities such as Help for Heroes have generated massive public support, the ordeal faced by some veterans was not widely acknowledged until relatively recently. That ordeal deserves our attention.
It is perhaps easy for us to disregard how difficult the transition must be from life in a combat zone to civvy street. Although the training received by personnel during military service allows the majority to readjust to life after discharge, a growing but unspecified number drop out of the welfare system altogether, and become homeless, disfranchised from mainstream services and socially isolated. Education, further training and employment are difficult to access, and such opportunities are not automatically advertised to personnel on leaving the forces.
Veterans are over-represented in NHS emergency waiting rooms and in road traffic accidents. I do not know whether hon. Members are aware that veterans who have returned recently from a theatre of conflict are 50% more likely to be killed in a road traffic accident than ordinary members of the public. That point bolsters the need for a careful examination of this matter.
As a result of what can be an acute social rupture, an alarming number of such young men and women fall foul of the criminal justice system. That is often prompted by substance misuse and mental health problems. I was first alerted to this problem when I appeared as a barrister in the Crown courts of north Wales, Cheshire and beyond. In the space of about a fortnight, I saw a huge number of young people newly returned from Afghanistan who had committed very serious offences, for which there was no reasonable explanation. That made me think that something was wrong in the system, because those people were as rational as any of us, but my God, the things that they had been through recently would have rocked any of us.
On 5 March 2008, I tabled a written question to the then Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, asking what percentage of the inmates in prison in England and Wales had served in either of the Gulf conflicts. I was informed that such information was “not collected centrally”. I have since found out that at no point is it compulsory to ask someone who is accused of a crime whether they have a service history. That practice must surely be rectified, and some police forces are collecting that information.
Mr Llwyd
I agree, and perhaps I should move away from the figures, because I cannot profess to know them precisely any more than anybody else can. All I am trying to say is that the problem is serious. The hon. Gentleman makes the valid point that we would expect people who have been in the armed services to be more disciplined, and in most cases they are. However, there are worrying examples of people who, for almost inexplicable reasons, commit violent offences.
I know of two cases intimately. The first is that of a person in a fish and chip queue in north Wales who felt that somebody behind him was invading his space. He reacted violently, because he had been trained to look after himself. Unfortunately, by the time he had finished the skirmish two or three minutes later, there was a person on the floor very badly injured and he went away for four years for grievous bodily harm.
The second case is that of a young lad from my constituency who returned home from Helmand on a Wednesday and borrowed his father’s car to go out on the Friday night. He drank far too much and had an accident, killing two passengers. It could be argued that he had been to hell and back in Helmand and felt that he could do such things with impunity. I am not running that young man down, and I am sad to see him where he is, but that is another example of which I am aware.
Chris Bryant
I am getting slightly nervous about the hon. Gentleman’s argument, because—
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is chuntering away, but if he waits until I have made my point, he can respond afterwards.
My concern is that just because there is a correlation between two sets of statistics, that does not necessarily mean that there is a causation. In other words, just because there may be a higher or lower proportion of former members of the armed forces in prison, that does not necessarily mean that it was because they were in the armed forces that they went to prison.
Mr Llwyd
That may very well be, and we must also remember that the vast majority of those who are in prison come not from the Navy or the Air Force but from the Army, the infantry. There are socio-economic factors to be borne in mind and the equation is not simple, so the hon. Gentleman is right in that regard.
I should like to leave aside the scale of the problem and consider what we can do to assist those who return. First, we must do everything we can to prevent veterans from falling into various problems after discharge. Secondly, I want measures to be taken to ensure that help and advice are available to everybody in the services who encounters problems, whether they be about substance misuse, mental health, housing, employment, money management, violent behaviour or anything else. We spend a lot of time training our young men and women up to the highest level before they go into harm’s way. As I see it, we need to spend much more time and money on debriefing them and bringing them back into the less compressed atmosphere of civvy street. As we know, civvy street can be a hazardous environment for vulnerable returnees without assistance.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is particularly appropriate that we are debating this Bill on the anniversary of the treaty of Versailles coming into operation in 1920 and the first meeting of the United Nations in London in 1946. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster). When I was a Minister, I tried to do business with him in as friendly a way as possible in relation to the armed forces and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. His comments about the reserve forces were absolutely right, because it is true to say that the operations that this nation have been involved in over the past 15 years could not have been conducted without the support of the reserve forces, many of whom have, I suspect, had to go into theatre far more often than they or their employers expected when they signed up. We therefore owe them “a debt of gratitude”; those words are often bandied around this Chamber, but he made a very fair point about the importance of the reserve forces. I know from my constituency that they are an important part of the contribution that is made.
The hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) was absolutely right to say that it would make more sense to stick with the term “military covenant”. I am often more pedantic than is good for my friendships—[Hon. Members: “Surely not”.] I thought that it was you heckling me, Mr Deputy Speaker, but as you have not had a drink yet, it probably was not. He is right to say that this phrase is now common currency and is used generally. I suppose that people who were being pedantic might say, “That merely applies to the Army”, but language changes and he is right to say that trying to reinvent a concept of an “armed forces covenant” is inappropriate. I hope that the Minister will respond accordingly when considering the way forward for this Bill.
I particularly wanted to speak in this debate because this country’s mining constituencies have produced many members of the armed forces. A large number of men and, increasingly in recent years, women have joined the Army, rather than the Navy or the Royal Air Force. When a survey was carried out in recent years of the preferred career of choice in mining constituencies or former mining constituencies, as mine must now be considered, the armed forces came out on top by far, followed by the police. I am sure that that is partly because of a tradition that there has been in many of these constituencies—there is a deep respect for the traditions of the armed forces, and people have wanted to follow in the footsteps of their fathers, grandfathers and so on—but it is also because of the economic circumstances.
At its height, a single industry in my constituency employed 130,000 men working underground, and when it disappeared and a large number of people were, in effect, left on the scrap heap politically, many of those young men felt that the only career open to them was one in the armed forces. They have managed to take a great deal of pride from such a career. They have been able to give to the armed forces and the armed forces have been able to give back. I was delighted that the Ministry of Defence decided to open a combined cadet force in Treorchy comprehensive school. In the main, cadet forces had previously been attached only to public schools—fee-paying schools—so it was a great delight to see a new one start in Treorchy a few years ago.
Dr Murrison
I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely on that. What does he make of comments by the National Union of Teachers to the effect that it was wrong for the previous Government—and, presumably, now for this Government—to encourage the involvement of uniformed men and women in our armed forces in areas of deprivation, where there is high unemployment, because they may be preying on people there? I utterly refute that assertion and I hope that he does too.
Chris Bryant
When I have heard those accusations, as I have when political opponents in my constituency have attacked me ferociously on these issues, I have wholly deprecated them. If we examine the work that the armed forces do in schools, we find that it is not about preying on young people who, in some sense, might not have other opportunities in life. Often such work is about giving people the confidence in themselves to go on to do something that has nothing to do with the armed forces. It is about giving them a structure in life, and a sense of discipline and opportunity, which is of value to the wider community. I know that some teachers at Treorchy comprehensive were sceptical about the combined cadet force coming to the school, but since it has been in place they have been entirely supportive and have found it to be an entirely beneficial operation.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
I agree about the importance of cadets. I visited my local Stonehouse platoon of the Army Cadet Force last week. It is fantastic and I would like to be sure that this Bill will provide the appropriate support to the cadets and the officers who train them—I am sure that it will.
Chris Bryant
I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s point. I do not think that the Bill will do much directly for the cadets, except in so far as putting the military covenant in statute will make us focus on these issues more keenly. If there was one niggly point that I tried to make to the Labour Government when we were in power and would still make to this Government, it is that the sea cadets do not receive the amount of support that other cadet forces get directly from the relevant armed forces. That is a problem, especially because at the moment the sea cadets in the Rhondda spend almost all the money that they receive in support on just paying their insurance bill every year. I wonder whether we could ensure that the Ministry of Defence provides insurance support for all cadet operations. We could thereby release the sea cadets and other such forces to get on with their important work without having to spend all their time fundraising.
Charlie Elphicke
I could not agree more strongly with the hon. Gentleman on that point. The sea cadets are often the Cinderella of the cadets. Dover sea cadets are trying to buy the shed in which they train from the MOD but are having some difficulty. There is not the help that one would hope to see, so I echo and support his comments on the sea cadets.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful for those comments and I will pass them on to Minerva in the Rhondda.
My other reason for wanting to take part in this debate is that Wales has a particular tradition of its own in relation to the armed forces, not only in successive wars but in producing a much higher quantity of young men and, increasingly, of young women to go into our armed forces than would be proportionate to its population. It is difficult, as the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) said, to get accurate statistics, but roughly 9% of the armed forces come from Welsh constituencies. That compares with just 5% of the UK population coming from Wales. There is, therefore, over-representation. That may in part be to do with the fact that we have higher levels of deprivation—multiple levels of deprivation —in certain parts of the country.
One of the ironies is that little of the time that Welsh personnel spend in the armed forces will be spent in Wales. They might have to go to Sennybridge. They might spend a very cold, wet, hideous, horrible time on the mountain tops in training, but the likelihood is that the vast majority of their time will be spent, even when they are in the UK, not in Wales but elsewhere.
I make a plea to the MOD and the Minister. I hope that he will be able to answer this later. When we are considering future bases in the UK, of course, as the Secretary of State said, the most important thing is ensuring the security of the realm. Every member of the armed forces would agree with that, but I argue that part of the military covenant is saying that deployment when at home, rather than when in theatre, should allow for a wider spread than is currently the case.
We have not mentioned the armed forces parliamentary scheme, but it is an important element of the way parliamentarians obtain information from those who have served or are reservists and from others from other backgrounds, and ensure that that informs our debate. In my time in the scheme, nearly everyone I met in the armed forces—this is not a partisan point—came from a Labour constituency, but all the sites we visited were in Conservative constituencies. That is not because anyone has decided to put them in Conservative constituencies; it is just because of a series of historical flukes. I urge the Government, as they consider what to do about the redeployment from Germany, to think about whether there is a base, for example, at St Athan, that might be used to base Welsh troops in Wales. I say that not as someone who supports a separation of Welsh armed forces from British armed forces but as someone who wants to reinforce the Welsh armed forces.
I believe that there are several elements to the covenant that are not mentioned in clause 2 but are equally important. We have debated one—equipment—at some length in the past few years, in particular because our troops are in theatre in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes North said that he felt that the equipment he was given when he was last deployed was far more suitable and up to date than previously. He is right, but there is going to be a constant process of change.
Likewise, ensuring that our troops have the most up to date, effective training possible is important. Several hon. Members have referred to whether it is possible to unify posts between the three services in relation to the military police. I argue that we need to go much further and extend that combination of training. Those who have had an opportunity to visit Shrivenham will know that bringing the training of officers in the Army, Air Force and Navy together in one place, which was at one point thought unthinkable—the idea that the Royal Navy would leave Greenwich was believed to be unthinkable—has brought enormous dividends to all three services. Notwithstanding the decision that seems to have been made in relation to St Athan and defence training, we need to be able to do more of our training on a shared forces basis because there is more that each of the services can learn from each other.
The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd has a long record of campaigning on veterans issues, for which I pay tribute to him. All too often, people think of veterans as people who served in the first or second world wars, but many of the veterans in my constituency are 25, 26 or 27 years of age and their service will not just be for the few years that they spent being paid by the armed forces; in terms of the psychological and physical issues that they have to deal with, their service will be for the whole of their lives. Not only will they be serving in that way, but their families will, too. He is right to point to the need for continuity of care beyond—in many cases far beyond—the day when someone goes into civvy street.
I caution the hon. Gentleman, however, as I tried to do earlier—this crops up quite regularly in our debates—about the difference between correlation and causation. For example, it is often argued that couples who co-habit and have children are far more likely to split up than those who marry and have children. It is factually true. The question is: is that because they got married, or because they are the kind of people who felt differently about the institution of marriage in the first place? In other words, is there correlation between these statistics, or is there causation?
That is where we need to be precise in relation to the ongoing care of those in the armed forces. Many of the young people who join the armed forces from the Rhondda go in with many of the problems that they will leave with. They go in, as we know, with lower levels of literacy, which is why the armed forces in recent years have had to do much more to ensure that our troops have a high level of literacy. Some of them will have difficulties with other educational issues that need to be addressed.
The point is that it is not necessarily because those people were in the armed forces that some of the problems follow. Where the problem is because they were in the armed forces—perhaps because their training was so effective that they do not realise the lethal nature of the punch that they could deliver compared with someone else—it is all the more important that the MOD and the whole of society take action to ensure that young people, as they go into the armed forces and see through their years in service, and when they leave, have the full support and training that they need.
I know that many others want to take part in the debate and I do not want to delay others from speaking any further, but I hope that the Minister will respond on the issue of Welsh troops being based in Wales because it is one of the ways that we can ensure that there is continuity for young people who are removed from the Rhondda to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who spend all their service career living in Wiltshire. When they are finished, they come back to the Rhondda—
Chris Bryant
I am not going to respond to that, although the hon. Gentleman is enticing.
By that uprooting, those service personnel are not given a proper chance when they go back. The key element is ensuring that that matter is addressed not just by the MOD, but by the Welsh Assembly Government.
Mr Robathan
If the right hon. Gentleman were any good at maths, he would work out that one Liberal means that at least five Labour Back Benchers should have participated.
Leaving that to one side and returning to the Bill, the Government are required to introduce an Armed Forces Bill every five years, because those Bills provide the legal basis for the armed forces and for their discipline. Five years ago, the Armed Forces Act 2006 established a single system of service law, which applies to all members of the armed forces wherever they are serving in the world. It was a significant piece of legislation. The Bill that we are considering today is much smaller, and much of it was implemented under the previous Government. We are, in fact, pursuing the policies that the previous Government introduced, so I was particularly saddened by the shadow Secretary of State’s extraordinary speech. [Interruption.] The term that applies to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is “chuntering”.
The covenant has engendered a great deal of discussion in the debate, and we are fulfilling the Prime Minister’s pledge to put the matter on a statutory basis in this Bill. Every year, there will be a report on the covenant, which the House may wish to discuss. Returning to the hon. Members who have spoken, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster), who is an extremely sensible friend, made some interesting points. He asked about the air bridge, which we are working on. Because, like me, he has travelled on it and been delayed on it, he knows that part of the problem is the age of the aircraft. He asked whether we will add days lost on rest and recuperation to post-tour leave, which is now our policy and is happening already.
My hon. Friend gave his view, which comes from serving in the Territorial Army, on medals. He also mentioned reservists. I agree with him entirely that support for such servicemen who return from operational tours is difficult. I pay tribute to those whose day job is not serving in the armed forces but who go out on operational tours and do excellent work helping our regular armed forces, and I pay tribute to their families, too.
Turning to the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd)—[Interruption.] I think that I am more Welsh than the hon. Member for Rhondda.
Mr Robathan
If it is the case that the hon. Gentleman is, in fact, Welsh, contrary to all expectations and signs, of course I withdraw the remark.
The armed forces are under-represented in the prison population. I am sure that the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd did not mean to do this, but it is important that we do not patronise our soldiers, sailors and airmen, who are more law-abiding than most. Of course some of them go to prison, but we are talking about responsible adults, some of whom commit crimes. Interestingly, the chances of being in prison if one has been in the armed forces are considerably less than if one has not. Our armed forces members want to be treated as responsible adults and not as victims.
I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison)—he is a doctor and he is very gallant—for his extremely important report “Fighting Fit”. He asked whether we should call the armed forces covenant the military covenant in the Bill and I shall look into that. There is a legal issue involved, but I can certainly say that the covenant report will not be a tick-box exercise.
The very Welsh hon. Member for Rhondda was particularly keen on armed forces members from Wales being able to serve in Wales, but my experience of young people—both those going into the armed forces and those going to university—is that they often want to get away from their home environment. I have not heard many complaints about this before and I think they might not wish to be close to home. In my period in the armed forces, a very long time ago, I spent a disproportionate amount of my time training in Wales—in the Brecon Beacons at Sennybridge, in Snowdonia and in other places. The hon. Gentleman was very disparaging about Sennybridge, but I rather liked it.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) referred to the system of having a Bill every five years as technical, but I disagree entirely. I notice that he read history, but I do not know whether he got his history degree.
Mr Robathan
—all of the people on the Opposition Front Bench; I can remember the Labour Government of 1974 to 1979. The pay of the armed forces was reduced so much, and was so poor, that people left in their droves, and we ended up with something called the black hole of officers. So many officers of captain and major rank left that there was a huge black hole, which was quite good for promotion, but not much good for the armed forces.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is extremely proud of Dover and military life there—I got that message—mentioned electoral registration. We are working on ensuring that it is easier for service personnel to register only once, because the system has become extremely complicated under quite well-meaning measures of the previous Government.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle), gave her first speech from the Front Bench. I congratulate her and welcome her to the Front Bench. I also welcome the service personnel Command Paper; I think that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is not here, was partly responsible for it. It is basically a good piece of work that we support, and we are going forward with many of the improvements that were suggested and started by the previous Government; I think that we can say that.
The hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire then, I am sorry to say, went on about the external reference group, which we value. We have no plans to get rid of it, or to not publish its reports. It will produce a report, which will be seen and will be transparent. I assume that it will become evidence to the report on the covenant that the Secretary of State will have to make to Parliament. As I explained to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife, that is about the accountability of the Government to Parliament, on which I hope we all agree. This is a non-story, a non-issue; the process will be transparent and accountable. We will listen to the external reference group, and if it does not like what we have done, I would expect it to say so. Hew Strachan and I have regular meetings. I always counsel people not to believe everything that they read in the newspapers.
We will look at the idea of a veterans identity card, which the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire was lauding, but one of the issues that should be addressed is: who actually wants it? It is quite important that a little bit of market research is done on that, to start with. She asked whether I was having meetings with people on the Bomber Command memorial. I had a meeting just before the recess with the new chairman of the Bomber Command memorial. We had a very constructive meeting, and I am helping him on one particular issue that I do not want to get into now; difficulties had arisen over planning permission in the royal parks.
The hon. Lady attacked us regarding the covenant. We are introducing the covenant. The Labour Government did not do so. It is rather strange to hear us attacked in such a way for what we are doing on the covenant. It is work in progress, like the degree of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife.
Mr Robathan
The hon. Gentleman does an awful lot of chuntering. I am surprised that anyone lets him in.
Finally, I turn to the speech from the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy), the shadow Secretary of State. Disappointing is the best word to describe it. He said that our attitude was heartless. He was a member of the previous Government under the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). I point out to him that one cannot spend money that one has not got. The previous Government spent it like water. They destroyed our economy.
The right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire grins back at me. He highlighted the decision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government to change the indexation of service pensions from RPI to CPI, so perhaps now he will stand up and pledge that should, God forbid, the Labour party be returned to government at the next election, it will return the indexation of armed forces pensions and perhaps all public service pensions from CPI to RPI.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Howarth
I am acutely aware of the contribution that Barnoldswick in my hon. Friend’s constituency makes to Rolls-Royce, which is surely one of the extraordinary jewels in the United Kingdom’s engineering crown. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has written to Congressmen in both Houses on the Hill to emphasise our support for the F136 engine, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has had meetings with the head of Air Force Acquisition, Lockheed Martin and others. I assure my hon. Friend that this Administration are doing everything that he would expect of them to promote a great British product to the United States.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Of course we all want to see a successful defence industry exporting as much as possible abroad, but must there not be a bottom line, namely that we do not sell to corrupt countries or to countries that will use what they buy from us to oppress their own people? In that context, is it not important for us to ensure that exports of small arms—which often keep inflamed the battles and civil wars in Africa—are brought to an end?
Mr Howarth
I hope that the hon. Gentleman would be the first to accept that we have one of the toughest export licensing controls for military equipment in the world. I yield to no one in praising the efforts of both the present Government and the last Conservative Government to ensure that, as far as possible, equipment has gone to the right people and not to those who would misuse it. We are, of course, governed by the law as well.
I entirely take the hon. Gentleman’s point about small arms, but unfortunately the world is awash with small arms, many of which do not come from the United Kingdom.
Defence Spending (Wales)
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Simon Hart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He troubles me, because, surely, defence of the realm is the most important thing on which to base our decisions in this context. Delightful though it is, this is not a job creation scheme. This is about defending the nation in the context of an extremely complicated and rather depressing financial background and the £38-billion black hole in defence procurement spending, with which we were left.
Geraint Davies
Is it important today to back the deficit and cuts generally, ignoring the difference between investing in our strategic interests for the future to defend our country and spending? Clearly, this is all about cuts and not the interests of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents.
Simon Hart
The choices are almost too tempting. Who was first? I believe the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was the patient one.
Chris Bryant
I had almost given up on the hon. Gentleman, but now I am on my feet I am grateful to him for giving way. He referred to the completely fallacious figure of £36 billion—or he may have inflated it to £38 billion. The National Audit Office made it clear that if there was a gap at all, it was of £6 billion. He should not perpetuate these myths.
Simon Hart
The hon. Gentleman will be pleased that I am able to quote. The black hole of £38 billion in unfunded procurement commitments to which I referred is from an MOD brief, post-SDSR defence SB, from 19 October 2010. If that is good enough for the MOD, it is good enough for me. I am sorry that it is not good enough for him.
Mr Robathan
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful case. The figure is not fallacious; the MOD budget was projected to be overspent by £38 billion over the next 10 years.
Simon Hart
I thank the Minister for his intervention.
Let me turn briefly to St Athan. It is not my normal habit to come to the defence of my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), but he is actually in the Vale of Glamorgan today, where he is working hard on behalf of his constituents.
Simon Hart
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), I am not, sadly, in possession of the diary of my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan. [Interruption.] I wish I had not bothered to do this. However, nobody can doubt my hon. Friend’s commitment to the future of St Athan. [Interruption.] I would love to continue, but if anybody wishes to intervene, they can do so.
Mr Brown
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I hope to cover some of the points that have been raised this morning, and I shall comment on that.
It is pretty clear that military establishments and bases are dotted across the entire UK. It must be recognised that those facilities become part of day-to-day life in those communities, whether through a sense of pride in being associated with the defence of our country, or simply because of the employment opportunities that they may bring. Frankly, whatever the reason, it all matters.
I want to quote from the debate of 4 November, because comment has been passed on the manner in which the strategic defence and security review came about. The quotation, from Hansard, is:
“The strategic defence and security review was an opportunity to reshape the UK’s military force in that changing global security landscape. Unfortunately, according to the Royal United Services Institute, 68% of the defence and security community felt that it was a ‘lost opportunity for a more radical reassessment of the UK’s role in the world’.”—[Official Report, 4 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 1074.]
Many of us, including all Labour Members, have said that it was far too quick. The previous full review under the Labour Government took some 15 months to complete.
Chris Bryant
I hope that my hon. Friend will make it clear that there has been another loss of opportunity in relation to the St Athan defence technical college. We supported it not primarily because we wanted investment in Wales but because we wanted to improve training for our armed forces. So many of our young men and women go into the armed forces, and we wanted to make sure that their lives were protected and that they had the best training possible.
Mr Brown
Absolutely. I shall come to that later, but I have to say to my hon. Friend that I could not have put it much better. Until now, at least, there has been more than a fair degree of consensus on what was to happen at St Athan. It is somewhat disappointing that we are not getting the same feeling today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
This is the first Westminster Hall debate to which I have contributed in the past five years. It is a pleasure to be here and to be under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) on securing the debate. She spoke about the effects that choices on defence spending can have on regions of the United Kingdom, and I hope to return to her words shortly.
There has been some suggestion that the Government are, in some way, anti-Welsh; that they have their daggers out for Wales. That is absolutely not the case. Let me give my own credentials. My great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were doctors in Islwyn, in Risca. My grandfather was headmaster of Llandaff Cathedral school.
Mr Robathan
I am just saying that I am not Welsh- [Interruption.] Rather, I am not anti-Welsh. The name Robathan is Welsh. In fact, in Islwyn, there are many Robathans in the telephone book. I had a great-uncle in the Welsh Guards, and another great-uncle who was killed at Gallipoli.
Mr Robathan
The hon. Gentleman is always full of hot air. If he could listen for a bit, he will hear what I have to say about some of the comments that have been made. I also had a great-uncle in the Welch Regiment who was killed at Gallipoli. I would rather not be accused of being anti-Welsh. I can promise that I have spent more time on the Brecon Beacons in the driving rain and snow and in Sennybridge than most people in this Chamber, possibly with the exception of you, Mr Gray, and my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart). I have also climbed from Capel Curig adventure training camp. Those are all the military assets in Wales that I have used in my life. I would rather not hear the suggestion that we are anti-Welsh. This is the first Welsh debate in which I have taken part, because I am not representing Wales.
Let me pay tribute to all the civilians who work for the MOD and in defence projects in St Athan and elsewhere in Wales. I should also like to pay tribute to all the armed forces who are based in Wales or who are from Wales. Indeed, I support anyone who supports the defence of the United Kingdom from wherever they come.
I have been surprised by this debate because I have found it extraordinarily narrow and partisan [Interruption.] Did the hon. Gentleman say because it is Welsh? I find it astonishing. The hon. Member for Swansea East compared the desecration of war memorials in her constituency with the fact that we are not proceeding with the Metrix bid at St Athan. I can see no relationship there at all; I do not believe that her constituents or people outside will, either.
Hon. Members have spoken about the SDSR, but let me be quite clear about it. Across Government, we have faced the worst financial and economic crisis that anybody in this room has seen in their lifetime. [Interruption.] It is no good groaning. The hon. Member for Rhondda was a Minister in the previous Government and he knows that it is true.
We are currently borrowing £143 million a day. In terms of defence in Wales, that would buy, every week, three Type 45 destroyers. [Interruption.] Do they never go to Welsh ports? It is not fallacious, as the hon. Member for Rhondda said—[Interruption.] Gosh, he witters. It is not fallacious that the defence budget was overspent by £38 billion; it is true.
Let me turn briefly to some of the remarks that have been made. First, the hon. Member for Swansea East quite reasonably wants to hear about St Athan. One of the biggest decisions that the Ministry of Defence had to take was on the defence training rationalisation programme. We have heard at length about its cancellation. Put simply, that project, in the guise that it was in, was never going to be made affordable. Despite strenuous efforts by the Department—under both the previous and current Administrations—it became clear that the bidder, Metrix, was unable to deliver an affordable, commercially robust proposal within the prescribed period. On that basis, the Defence Secretary decided to terminate the project.
We continue to believe that individual technical training co-located on fewer sites, as my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) mentioned, remains the best solution for the armed forces, but not necessarily for St Athan. The SDSR committed the Government to continuing to look at options from pre-training across the services.
Chris Bryant
This is a serious point. Many of us believe that bringing together all the forces for technical training is an important part of what was suggested in the past. It has worked extremely well at Shrivenham. Who would ever have thought that the Royal Navy would be prepared to leave Greenwich? It has, and it has worked. Is the Minister still saying that he wants to achieve purple training in, we hope, St Athan or elsewhere?
Mr Robathan
As the hon. Gentleman will understand, I have to be very careful not to commit myself to things that we are reviewing at the moment. None the less, we do see a need and a sensible way forward for more purple training on some issues. Some of that may take place in St Athan and some elsewhere.
I can assure hon. Members that St Athan is still being considered; a substantial amount of training continues at St Athan.
Defence Treaties (France)
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Fox
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his welcome. He is entirely correct that there has been long-standing co-operation. Some of the things that I have read and heard today have made it sound as though this was the first time there had been any military co-operation at all between the United Kingdom and France. Beginning with joint exercising next year, we will examine ways in which we can organically take forward co-operation such as we have outlined today. There is no big bang—this is about working out how we can best improve the relationship incrementally and build confidence over a long period, given the complexities of Afghanistan and so on.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the Secretary of State on the pro-European, very sensible measure that he has introduced. He mentioned introducing the treaties “in the normal way”. I presume that that is a reference to the Ponsonby rule, which we amended earlier this year. Will he therefore guarantee that, as provided for under that rule, there will be a debate and vote on the treaties in each House, so that we can scrutinise the details line by line?
Dr Fox
The Government business managers, in conjunction with the Opposition, will set out how the process will take place, but my personal choice would certainly be to ensure that both Houses have a full opportunity to debate these measures, not least because it would give them the chance to understand fully the benefits that they will bring the United Kingdom.
Strategic Defence and Security Review
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Arbuthnot
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct to say that the Committee comments in its report on the need for the MOD to work out with other Departments the consequences of changes to the defence estates. We did not mention the words “RAF Lyneham”, but had we thought of him, I am sure we would have.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman makes quite a devastating critique of the process, but may I push him in a slightly different direction to another part of the review, namely St Athan? The process of developing the contract has gone on for a long time—I would argue that it has gone on too long—and we need to resolve the issue. Otherwise, the increased costs of delay will bear heavily on the budget. In the end, we must ensure that we provide the very best technical training in a modern world to our armed forces. We will do that either in 14 different places in England, or in one place in Wales. Does that not require a slightly different process from the one that has been adopted?
Mr Arbuthnot
The hon. Gentleman is rapidly taking on the mantle of our former colleague, John Smith, who made regular speeches on St Athan, and I pay tribute to him on that account and on many others. Training must be at the heart of maintaining the extraordinary quality of our armed forces. I hope that the process of getting to a proper result on defence training will be concluded at the end of the strategic defence and security review, because we need a degree of certainty, but so far we have had too much delay. My constituency used to contain a base at Bordon, which was seriously affected by the change to St Athan. We ought to leave the result on St Athan to the SDSR.
There has been insufficient consultation with the public at large, armed forces personnel, the defence industry and parliamentarians. With regard to the last of those, the review was initiated before the new Parliament properly began its business. There was a need for some speed in the review and it took six weeks to establish the Defence Committee, and I accept that neither was the fault of the MOD. However, only one debate has been held in the House, during which I was not fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr Speaker. Much of the work of the review has happened during the parliamentary recess and the results will be announced shortly after the conference recess. I can best describe that as a sub-optimal process.
Our concerns include the startling speed with which the review is taking place; the influence of current operations on future capabilities; the lack of future ring-fencing for the Defence budget; the lack of public engagement with the process; the uncertainty over the future funding position of Trident; the MOD’s postponement of discussions on the potential savings that future procurement and defence reform could bring; the insufficient consultation with the defence industry; the lack of a proper review of the future of reservists; and a lack of symbiosis between structural change in the MOD and the MOD’s future direction. We ask whether operations will be funded in future by the contingency reserve. We are also concerned about the retirement within three weeks of senior people in the MOD who were deeply involved with the SDSR, and therefore that the implementation of the SDSR will be led by people who did not lead in its creation. Quite frankly, the report is a cacophony of anxiety boiled down to 23 pages.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Nick Harvey
My hon. Friend is aware that there were two different proposals in the final analysis for the defence training review facilities: Cosford and St Athan. Those were subject to the most detailed scrutiny to decide which was the better fit for our defence requirements and the decision was that the defence training review should relocate facilities to St Athan. We believe that there is an obvious synergy between that and other work at St Athan, particular in high technology, and a lot of work has already gone into preparing for that move. To change course now, as he suggests, would undo a great deal of investment that has already been made and add considerably to the final cost.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I wholeheartedly endorse what the Minister says. He is a brave man: he has seen off the first of the Tories of the afternoon, and I am delighted that he is sticking with St Athan. Is he prepared to meet a cross-party group of MPs from Wales so that we can feed into the ongoing discussions on the strategic defence review, and so that we can ensure that he understands fully the enormous value of bringing those elements of training together in south Wales, better to support our armed forces, which, in the end, is the single most important thing we can do?
Nick Harvey
I take the hon. Gentleman’s endorsement in the spirit it was intended. He will understand that our concern is to ensure both value for money and that the training facilities that we secure are best fitted to our defence needs. Decisions on progress will be necessary in the course of the next few months, and as part of that consideration and that work, I will be happy to talk to him and to others.
Strategic Defence and Security Review
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Fox
The point of the review is to ensure that we have the proper defence for the United Kingdom. We will have further things to say about the defence industrial strategy and how we will take that forward, not least because it represents high levels of employment in some economically less well-off parts of the United Kingdom, and we will come to the House with those proposals in the near future.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his new post. I could make a similar point about St Athan with regard to Wales and, for that matter, more deprived areas of the country. However, that is not the point that I want to make about St Athan. Rather it is that, in the light of what the right hon. Gentleman said about the changing nature of warfare, technical training is far more important now than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Is it not absolutely vital that one of our highest priorities be to ensure that such training is improved for all our troops? Does that not mean that we should support and he should support—this is my submission—the St Athan defence training college?
Dr Fox
Given my experience of the hon. Gentleman, I would be extremely surprised if that were the end of his submission, and I look forward to an undoubtedly weighty document landing on my desk. I understand his points, and training is absolutely vital, particularly given the increasing professionalism in the armed forces and the increasing complexity involved. None the less, he will understand that, while that project is being considered as part of the SDSR, it would be inappropriate for me to give him even a hint of our position on it, but if he makes a personal submission, I shall certainly ensure that I read it—undoubtedly at length.