James Heappey
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(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Samantha Dixon (City of Chester) (Lab)
The Minister for Armed Forces (James Heappey)
Our commitment to NATO and Euro-Atlantic security is unconditional. In response to Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, we have enhanced our force posture in Estonia and have sent warships and fighter aircraft to south-east Europe and the Mediterranean. We contribute to every NATO mission and declare the UK’s nuclear deterrent to NATO. The UK is committed to remaining NATO’s leading European ally.
Chris Elmore
A recent report by the Defence Committee raised concerns about the UK’s lack of ammunition reserves. The Committee said that the inability to restock our supplies puts at great risk our own defence, along with our commitments to supporting Ukraine. The Minister will say that the Department is announcing today that there are £2 billion-worth of stockpiles, but he cannot magic up munitions off the shelf—they can take years to be created. What assurance can he provide to me and the House that the shortage will not impact our domestic abilities and our wider commitments to NATO?
James Heappey
The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible point. The Select Committee’s report is being read at the moment and will be responded to as would be expected. There is an important distinction to make: only a small proportion of the equipment and stockpiles that we are providing to the Ukrainians come from the current active inventory and stockpiles of the UK military. A very large proportion of the ammunition is at or slightly beyond the date by which we would normally seek to dispose of it, and an even larger proportion of it—the majority—is sourced or manufactured from stockpiles or manufacturing capabilities overseas.
Samantha Dixon
Notwithstanding the Secretary of State’s earlier unwillingness to play a numbers game, the reality is that Ministers plan to cut the size of the Army to 73,000 by 2025, at a time that NATO has agreed to increase its high readiness forces to 300,000. Will the updated integrated review halt cuts to Army numbers?
James Heappey
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been clear all along that if the facts change, so will our approach to force structure. It is important to note that force size and readiness are not necessarily directly connected. A future force may require fewer people because of automation and artificial intelligence, or it may not. We are studying the lessons from Ukraine carefully. We came to a clear judgment in the last IR. As we work towards the publication of a refresh of the defence Command Paper, we will look at whether the assumptions of the last Command Paper are still sound.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Could I ask my very good friend the Minister whether the additional money for defence will allow us to provide more teeth arm units, plus the support arm units—enablers—to NATO?
James Heappey
It may do. The reality is that we are still providing a large number of frontline units to NATO, particularly in the maritime and air domains, but my hon. and gallant Friend’s principal concern will be about land forces. Even there, the UK continues to provide the most credible high readiness formations to the alliance. He made an important point that we can have as many fighting units as we wish, but without the logistics and the strategic enablers that get them to the front line, they are not worth having. The Secretary of State, Front-Bench colleagues and I have been clear for years that what urgently needs reinvestment is not a regrowth of our fighting echelon but a re-fleshing out of the logistics and the enablers, which—for good reasons—over the last 20 years have not been needed, but now so desperately are.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
On the point about logistics and enablers mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), when we look at our obligations to NATO and to Ukraine, particularly on stockpiling and ammunition, are Ministers looking at what procurement can be done commonly with NATO allies?
James Heappey
Absolutely. As the House might imagine, the UK is not alone in rediscovering the importance of stockpiles and strategic enablers over the last year. It is also not alone in finding out that industrial capacity cannot be turned on just like that, so working with allies around the alliance, both through the alliance itself and bilaterally, is clearly a very attractive option.
James Heappey
As the representative of a naval constituency, the shadow Minister does our armed forces a huge disservice in focusing on simply the Army when looking at our contribution to NATO. The UK is the only country to commit its entire nuclear deterrent to NATO; in any given year, the UK commits a number of maritime task groups to NATO—more than almost any other NATO ally; the UK commits handsomely to air policing and other air deployments; and, through the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, the 3rd (United Kingdom) Division and the various high-readiness Army formations, the UK contributes prominently in the land domain as well.
Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)
The Minister for Armed Forces (James Heappey)
The UK has provided substantial support to our NATO allies as we continue a united response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Over the past 12 months, the Royal Air Force has been deployed in Romania and Lithuania and across the Mediterranean and has completed patrols over the Black sea. We continue to contribute to NATO air activity across Europe. The Army has been deployed in Bulgaria, Romania and Estonia, where we have our enhanced forward presence battle groups. The Royal Navy has completed a major European deployment from the North sea to the Mediterranean. Our UK armed forces continue to strengthen interoperability with Finland and Sweden in anticipation of their accession to NATO. Beyond the US armed forces, no nation has contributed more.
Fleur Anderson
Are the Government working with NATO allies to set up a full 2023 action plan for Ukraine specifically—for military, economic, diplomatic and humanitarian support to help to give Ukraine confidence in a sustained stream of future supplies, to urgently ramp up our own industry, to encourage allies to do more across NATO and to make it clear to Putin that things will get worse, not better, for Russia?
James Heappey
The hon. Lady asks an excellent question, but I hope that she will not mind if I draw an important distinction. NATO is not involved in the planning of or in direct support of the Ukrainian war effort. That is a really important point, because Putin claims the exact opposite to the Russian public and is entirely wrong to do so. Those who support Ukraine do so as an alliance of friends of Ukraine outwith NATO, but of course NATO is invariably supportive of the work that we are doing.
The hon. Lady is right to observe that NATO has a job of work to do to strengthen its eastern flank, to provide wider deterrence against any sort of growth or escalation in the conflict and to make sure that the lessons of modern peer-on-peer war fighting in Ukraine are learned by the entire alliance, and learned quickly.
Liz Twist
Labour has fully backed moves to bolster NATO allies in response to the illegal invasion of Ukraine. What steps is the UK taking to ensure that our NATO obligations in respect of enhanced forward presence are completely fulfilled?
James Heappey
In the immediate response to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, we doubled the size of the battle group in Estonia as a further show of support for the Estonian Government and recognition of the importance of the enhanced forward presence category. We have also contributed to EFP battlegroups in Poland and Romania in the last 12 months. What will change, and what was announced at the summit in Madrid, is that there will be a new NATO regional defence plan, which will be an evolution of the in-place EFP battlegroups, alongside national defence plans. Of course the UK will be very supportive of the plan in the region that NATO assigns to us, but that is very much under review, and the UK looks forward to hearing the details from NATO once it has finished its work.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Following the very successful Franco-British summit at the end of last week—which was the fruit of an enormous cross-Government effort—does the Minister agree that renewing the bilateral defence partnership with France, the second largest European contributor to NATO, is an important part of not just strengthening the NATO alliance but enhancing European security, particularly in the east?
James Heappey
I really do. It is noteworthy that while relations elsewhere in Government may have been slightly more fraught, within the UK and French Defence Ministries the relationship has remained very tight, and necessarily so. The interdependence between the UK and France is very obvious. Our industrial collaboration is widespread, and will grow as a consequence of last week’s summit—and it is not just in the far east that the UK and France can work together, but in west Africa, where our interests are also very keenly aligned.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)