Armed Forces (Redundancies)
Jim Murphy Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on redundancies in the Ministry of Defence.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
As a result of the strategic defence and security review and the comprehensive spending review, it has, sadly, been necessary to plan for redundancies in both the civil service and the armed forces. At all times this should be done with sensitivity to individuals concerned, and with an understanding of the impact that it will have on them and their families. There are two recent cases in which this has not happened. Let me deal with them both.
First, there are the 38 Army personnel who have received an e-mail, as reported in today’s press. This is a completely unacceptable way to treat anyone, not least our armed forces. The correct procedure was not followed. I regret this, and want to reiterate the unreserved apology already made by the Army and on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. Arrangements have already been put in place to ensure that it does not happen again, and the Army are already investigating the particular circumstances.
Secondly, there is the redundancy of trainee RAF pilots. It was always going to be the case that with fewer airframes we would need fewer pilots. The fact that people found out through the publication of inaccurate details in a national newspaper will, I am sure, be deprecated on both sides of the House, and can only cause the individuals concerned undue distress. I understand the concerns of those facing redundancy, and I understand the temptation of the Opposition to exploit issues for political advantage, but I hope that with issues as sensitive as individual redundancies, we can refrain from making a sad situation worse for the individuals and their families.
Mr Murphy
Yesterday I came to the House to support strongly the Government’s actions on Afghanistan, but today we are here for an entirely different reason: the revelation that dozens of soldiers with decades of service have been sacked by e-mail. It is a shame that Ministers had to be summoned to the Commons, when they should have immediately asked to come here voluntarily.
We all know that we cannot stop every redundancy in the armed forces, but this is no way to treat soldiers who have served in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Secretary of State says that we should not play politics with such issues. Sacking anyone by e-mail is always wrong; sacking members of our armed forces in that way is utterly unforgiveable. But, unfortunately, as the Secretary of State says, a pattern is developing. One hundred RAF trainee pilots were sacked by media leak, some only hours away from getting their wings.
What is worse about this sordid affair is that the Government’s response has been to blame everyone else. In the morning it was the Army’s fault; by lunchtime it was a civil servant’s fault. But it was not the Army that decided to cut the deficit this far and this fast; it was not a civil servant who decided to go into a rushed defence review. It is the Government’s fault. They are locked into a logic of rapid deficit reduction, which means that mistakes are being made, some of them serious.
The country wants straight answers to direct questions. When will the Secretary of State announce who will be affected by the further reduction of 17,000 in the armed forces? On the sacking by e-mail, despite the Secretary of State’s previous promises, why did the Ministry of Defence agree that a soldier currently serving in Afghanistan should be sacked, and will the Secretary of State take personal responsibility for making sure that that never happens again? On RAF sackings, how many of the RAF trainees were within hours of fully qualifying as pilots? Have all those affected now been officially informed?
In all these matters there is a fine line between callousness and complacency. This was a callous event; the Government’s response this morning was complacent. They must act, act now, and make sure that it is never repeated.
Dr Fox
The right hon. Gentleman should stick to agreeing with the Government; he is much more impressive on such occasions. What is sad today is not just the opportunism but the utter lack of humility, because we would not have had to reduce the armed forces or the civil service to such a degree if we had not inherited from the Labour Government a black hole in the MOD budget of £38 billion and a national deficit of £158 billion—[Interruption.] So before Opposition Front Benchers go about pointing fingers, they should look—[Interruption]—and the right hon. Gentleman should look, to the Government of whom he was a part, who left us economically wrecked. We will set out—[Interruption.]
Afghanistan
Jim Murphy Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will report to the House the Government’s assessment of progress towards UK objectives in Afghanistan.
Before I begin my statement, I regret to have to inform the House that two British soldiers from the Royal Logistics Corps died early this morning at Camp Bastion. An investigation is under way into their deaths, but early indications suggest that they were caused by a fire. Their families have been informed, and I am sure that I speak for the whole House when I say that our thoughts and prayers are with them at this very difficult time.
International forces from 48 nations, including the United Kingdom, are in Afghanistan to prevent terrorists, including al-Qaeda, from again using Afghanistan to plot and launch terror attacks. The contributions of each nation to the international security assistance force are listed in the supplementary written information that I have provided for Members.
Meeting our objectives requires working with Afghanistan’s neighbours, and that includes helping Pakistan to tackle the problems on its side of the border. We are acting to provide the security space required for indigenous security and governance to grow, and we are supporting that growth through diplomatic, developmental and military means. The goal is for the Government of Afghanistan to provide, on a sustainable basis, the capability and governance required to manage their own security.
Although international military forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001 and significant gains have been made, it is only since August last year that we have had the number of troops and the right level of equipment to fulfil the strategy set for them. The challenge lies in having the patience and will to see the mission through.
The Foreign Secretary reported to the House in October. In this quarterly report, I will concentrate on the security progress being made in central Helmand, where the majority of UK forces operate. That is represented by the shaded area on the map of Helmand province that I have provided to Members.
Afghanistan has 401 districts, but 60% of the violence occurs in just nine of them, and eight of those nine are in Helmand and Kandahar. So we need to remember that Helmand is not representative of Afghanistan as a whole, and that there are many places where progressively a sense of normality and security is returning. Before I turn to general progress, in keeping with our undertaking to keep Parliament better informed as far as operational restrictions allow, I should like to update the House on current force levels.
The previous Government announced on 30 November 2009 that they had increased the endorsed UK force level to 9,500. It will not surprise the House to hear that that core number of 9,500 does not fully account for the actual force numbers we have deployed, given the complex and highly dynamic current situation on the ground. As the previous Government acknowledged, a sizeable contingent of our highly effective special forces operates in Afghanistan. In accordance with long-standing practice, we do not specify the scale or nature of their activities, but, if we take them into account with the enabling support that they need, we see that they take our numbers to more than 10,000.
For many years, UK forces have contributed to the protection of Kandahar airfield. In December 2009, it was expected that they would hand over that task to another ISAF partner within a matter of months. That did not happen, and we still have almost 200 extra troops protecting Kandahar airfield. That is constantly under review. Additionally, in September 2010, we announced the deployment of 200 personnel from the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps to ISAF Joint Command for 12 months. They will return by February 2012.
To maintain operational flexibility, we also approve temporary deployments, or surges, of additional personnel to meet specific and time-limited tasks. These include personnel to provide key headquarters functions or to prepare infrastructure for the rigours of the Afghan winter. From time to time, we also deploy the Theatre Reserve Battalion. The number of UK military personnel on the ground in Afghanistan also fluctuates from day to day, reflecting the number of personnel on rest and recuperation breaks, as well the changes that occur as we hand over responsibility between units during the twice-yearly reliefs in place. So the actual number of military personnel currently in Afghanistan is regularly well over 10,000.
We keep our force levels under constant review, and some reductions this year may be possible, dependent on conditions on the ground and implementation of the security transition process. I want every member of our armed forces deployed in Afghanistan to get the credit for the incredible job that they do, and I know that all those in the House will want to join me in paying tribute to their selfless courage and hard work.
The efforts of our armed forces are supported by the work of many hundreds of civilians from the Ministry of Defence and other Departments, including staff in our embassy in Kabul, in our taskforce headquarters and provincial reconstruction team in Lashkar Gah, in district stabilisation teams across Helmand, and in units and facilities outside Afghanistan. Again, I am sure that the House will want to join me in acknowledging the valuable work that they do and their devotion to duty.
In central Helmand, as General Petraeus has said, we have not yet seen success or victory, but we are seeing progress. It is fragile and not irreversible, but it is progress. The increase in Afghan and ISAF forces has enabled us to take the fight to the insurgency and, understandably, this has led to an overall increase in the number of violent incidents. But over the past three months, although the number is still higher than in previous years, we are seeing a trend of falling security incidents. For example, in the Marjah district of Helmand province, security incidents have fallen from a high of around 25 a day at the height of summer to just three or four a day at present. There is a seasonal pattern, as many insurgents, especially those fighting for financial rather than ideological reasons, return to their homes for the winter. This year, however, with the unusually mild weather and with winter arriving late, and the increased activity by ISAF and the Afghan national security forces, the fall in the number of incidents is more likely than in previous years to be an indicator of progress. However, I have to say to the House that casualty numbers are once again likely to rise in spring this year as insurgent activity increases.
This year will be just as difficult as 2010, but there will be distinct differences. The increased number of ANSF and ISAF forces allows us to arrest the momentum of the insurgency in more areas. Afghan forces will also begin to take the lead for security as the first districts and provinces begin the process of transition. There are now over 152,000 Afghan national army and 117,000 Afghan national police. This is on schedule to meet the October 2011 growth target to deliver 305,600 Afghan national security forces. But as the quantity increases, quality must not be neglected. One example is improving literacy to ensure that orders can be communicated in writing as well as orally, so that there is less scope for misinterpretation. Currently, around 85% of ANSF recruits are illiterate on entry. Literacy training is now mandatory for all recruits. The training is to be conducted by Afghan teachers, creating employment and boosting the economy, and significant progress is being made.
Progress has also been made in implementing the Afghan local police initiative. This is a temporary programme of village-owned security aimed at providing a security effect in areas with limited or no ANSF presence. The programme, established by presidential decree, comes under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior. Fourteen sites have been established, and 2,800 ALP have been recruited. Once the necessary security and capacity are established, these local forces will be integrated into the regular ANSF.
In Helmand, our bilateral police mission has focused on training Afghan national police at the Helmand police training centre, from which the 2,000th officer graduated in December. The UK Government have funded the building of six new police stations in Helmand in the last six months, with 10 more in construction and 28 more in design.
Following the Lisbon NATO summit, the transition process is on track. The joint Afghan-NATO transition board is set to deliver recommendations this month on which provinces will enter the transition process. President Karzai has confirmed that he will announce the first phase of transition on 21 March.
The UK Government’s development programmes work with the Government of Afghanistan to build capacity to direct and deliver their own development. Real progress is being made at the local level across Afghanistan. UK-funded teams from the provincial administration in Lashkar Gah have begun to create a district community council in Marjah, which this time last year was an insurgent stronghold. In Musa Qala, the newly elected council is developing a district plan for the Afghan Government to deliver with support from the UK. At national level, action plans have been developed for the Afghan Government’s national priority programmes, and we have seen encouraging progress in some areas. For example, revenue collection has increased by 32% compared with the same period last year, albeit from a low base. That is 9% above the International Monetary Fund target and brings Afghanistan a step closer to self-sufficiency.
The newly elected Afghan Parliament was inaugurated last month, with frictions between the Executive and legislature resolved democratically. However, we remain very concerned about levels of corruption, and in particular about the disturbing allegations about the Kabul Bank. We will continue to press the Afghan Government to translate their anti-corruption commitments into action.
The Afghan Government are taking further steps towards peace and reconciliation for all Afghans. The High Peace Council has toured Afghanistan to publicise the Afghan peace and reintegration programme. It is early days, but in some areas of Afghanistan, particularly in the north, increasing numbers of insurgents are seeking a way out of the cycle of violence. The High Peace Council recently visited Pakistan to take forward dialogue on peace and reconciliation.
Three hundred and fifty-six British servicemen and women have died on operations in Afghanistan— 15 since my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary last reported progress to the House at the end of October. In the face of such sacrifice, we should be in no doubt about the importance to our national security of the mission and our support for it. We have seen progress over the past few months but the need for strategic patience remains. To paraphrase the US Defence Secretary, we need to stop pulling up the tree by its roots to see if it is growing. There is still a great deal to do, but I believe there is also cause for cautious optimism.
Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
I welcome the chance to respond and I thank the Secretary of State for his update and for advance sight of it. This is the first opportunity I have had to put on record my thanks and those of the leader of my party and the shadow Foreign Secretary to all who facilitated our recent visit to Afghanistan.
The Secretary of State is right to say that as we go about our proceedings, more than 10,000 fellow Britons go about the business of making the UK more safe by making Afghanistan more stable. As I have reflected before, the courage of our forces is surpassed only by their modesty. I also put on record our appreciation of the efforts of our diplomatic and development staff in Kabul and throughout Afghanistan, many of whom we met. Theirs is a tough job and they combine professionalism with more than a little bravery. We remain committed to a cross-party approach to a cross-government strategy. The Secretary of State should know that our default position is to support the Government’s efforts in Afghanistan.
The Secretary of State is right to pay tribute to those who died earlier today and those who have died in recent times. No words said in this House can halt the suffering in the family homes of those who have been lost, but those families will know that across the country, there is immeasurable respect for them. They remain in all our thoughts and many of our personal prayers.
The House will be grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s update on the security situation and it will be glad to hear about the progress being made. I wish to ask him two sets of questions: the first about security and the second about diplomacy. On security, he rightly said that violence is concentrated in the south, but there are also concerning reports that violence is increasing in previously peaceful areas, most notably in the north of the country, where the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is said to be operating and strengthening the Taliban’s ability to attack. How is the coalition, and in particular nations other than the UK and the US, responding to those worrying developments?
The ability of Afghan forces to take ever greater responsibility for their own country will be an incremental process towards 2014, with the most significant recent development, alongside the US military surge, being an Afghan surge of locally recruited forces. In that context, I am pleased to hear the Secretary of State’s comments about the Afghan national police being on track to meet its final recruitment targets this year.
We had the opportunity to visit the excellent police training centre in Helmand involving British police forces, which is so important to the literacy and numeracy that the Secretary of State spoke about. He will be as concerned as I am, however, about the assimilation of national police within local communities. A recent UN report showed that in the south, the popularity of the police has dropped over the past year. It strikes me as unsustainable to have a national police force that is only 3% southern Pashtun. How are recruitment practices being modified to ensure that the police force is more reflective of the areas that it is charged with securing? Will the Secretary of State undertake to keep the House informed on a regular basis of the Afghan national security forces’ ability to operate independently of ISAF?
Turning to the political process, it is increasingly acknowledged that there will not be a military-only solution in Afghanistan. Although there have been, and will continue to be, military successes, we also need a diplomatic surge to match the military surge. As we moved to the agreed withdrawal date of 2015, a political settlement is not a prerequisite for our withdrawal, but it is undoubtedly a condition for lasting peace.
Many people make comparisons with the peace process in Northern Ireland, including some of the Afghans whom we met in Kabul. Although I believe the similarities are limited, one thing that Northern Ireland teaches us is that the process can be painstaking, even though there were fewer domestic and international actors there and a clearer sense of central authority—conditions that we do not currently have in our favour in Afghanistan. Will the Secretary of State share with the House how he foresees diplomatic efforts within Afghanistan and with her neighbours progressing over the forthcoming year? What are the benchmarks by which the House will be able to judge short-term success?
There are many other major issues that it will be important for Afghanistan to overcome to enjoy lasting peace. There are innumerable financial challenges, with rising unemployment and high levels of poverty fuelling recruitment to the poppy trade and the Taliban. There are rising numbers of internally displaced people, and corruption remains a real problem. I therefore ask the Secretary of State to confirm to the House that he will raise those matters at the Bonn conference, particularly a plan for further support for the Afghan economy. Will he provide an update on negotiations between the Afghan Government and the International Monetary Fund on the Afghan support fund?
On returning from Afghanistan, it struck me that over the past year or so, there had been a shift from a collective feeling of reluctant international pessimism to a sense of cautious optimism. Nothing in the Secretary of State’s statement today led me to change my opinion. On behalf of Labour Members, I continue to look to work with him on a bipartisan basis on this most important of issues.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jim Murphy Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Robathan
We most certainly do care about those whose pensions may be affected. In April 2010, RPI was less than CPI—it was actually negative—so RPI is not always better than CPI for pension uprating. The move is intended to be permanent because it will go forward for all public sector pensions and will be how public sector pensions will be determined in the future. If the Opposition wish to change that, perhaps they should announce now that they will change all public pensions back to RPI, should they ever—God forbid—be re-elected to office.
Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
There is increasing anger about this policy, and that has now been joined and taken up brilliantly in a campaign by the Daily Mirror. Yet the Government will not say how much the move will save them; they will not admit that it could cost a young Afghan war widow £750,000 in payments; and they have not explained that although the deficit is temporary, this cut is permanent. I invite the right hon. Gentleman to offer a direct answer to a direct question: given that, as we now know, this is not about deficit reduction, has he consulted the armed forces families federations, and what have they told him about this permanent cut?
Dr Fox
Clearly, there will be a role for the United Kingdom to play in that period, but it would be impossible to assess now what it will look like without knowing what the contribution from the international community will be. We very much hope that our international allies in ISAF will recognise that the concept of in-together, out-together is a sensible one and that countries do not simply transition from the safe areas that some might be in at present, right out of Afghanistan, but instead take part increasingly in the NATO training mission. By that means, we can have a proper share of responsibility after the transition away from combat forces. I think that would give us greater legitimacy and would give the mission greater acceptability in the UK.
Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
I agree with so much of what the Defence Secretary said in response to those questions. I returned from Afghanistan yesterday with the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Foreign Secretary. We were all moved by both the bravery and the modesty of our armed forces in Afghanistan. I agree with the Defence Secretary that people are moving away from a sense of reluctant pessimism to cautious optimism about the effort in Afghanistan. With the international forces exiting combat roles by 2015, as he mentioned, and given the point that he made about training the army, which has to be strong, even though most recruits cannot read and write, and many recruits cannot even count the number of bullets to place in a rifle, what success has there been so far in trying to persuade some of those nations, which are leaving earlier than us, to commit to that training effort not just in their own areas, but across the whole of Afghanistan?
Dr Fox
May I say first how grateful we are to the Leader of the Opposition for reasserting the bipartisan approach to Afghanistan? It is very important for our national security and for the morale of our armed forces. I am grateful for that support, even if I know that it is not endorsed by all sections of his party. That makes the decision even braver and even more in the national interest, so I thank him for that.
The right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) is right that it is important that we encourage those of our allies who may be moving out of a combat role into a training role. The decision taken by Canada in recent weeks is welcome. We wait to hear more details of the decision that may be taken by the Dutch. The National Security Council, on the Prime Minister’s instruction, has sought to find areas where Ministers have a particular personal engagement, where we might be able to maximise the pressures that we can bring to bear to get exactly that training mission outcome.
Armed Forces Bill
Jim Murphy Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
I join the Secretary of State in wishing you, Madam Deputy Speaker, Mr Speaker and the whole House a happy and healthy 2011.
I welcome the opportunity to speak in today’s debate on the Bill. The Armed Forces Act 2006 was a watershed for the military disciplinary system and I am glad to have the opportunity to renew and improve it through this Bill. Before I do so, I want to do what the Secretary of State rightly did and make a comment or two about Afghanistan.
As we gather after the new year recess, during which we enjoyed the company of and time with our families and loved ones, it is a time for us to remember how fortunate we are for the peaceful lives that we and, for the most part, our constituents lead and to reflect on the sacrifices that others make on our behalf to enable us to enjoy the opportunities that we do. Upwards of 10,000 men and women serving in Afghanistan did not spend Christmas with their families but, rather, stood up against an enemy that wishes to destroy all that we hold dear. The whole House will rightly thank them and send them our deepest and best wishes.
Tragically, for some families that absence is now permanent. Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who have died in the service of our country over the Christmas and new year period: Private Joseva Vatubua of 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland; Warrant Officer Charles Wood of 23 Pioneer Regiment the Royal Logistic Corps; Corporal Steven Dunn from 216 (Parachute) Signal Squadron, attached to 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment Battlegroup; and Private John Howard from 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment. Their patriotism, courage and dedication are unsurpassed. They will always be remembered by their friends and family and should never be forgotten by this House.
On Afghanistan, I want to say to this House, our forces and, importantly, our enemies that the Government will always have the support of the Opposition when they do the right thing to support our service personnel. We will continue to conduct debates on Afghanistan, in particular, in a spirit of comradeship, for that is in the national interest above all party interest.
The Armed Forces Bill is important and I am glad to have the opportunity to debate the issues that arise from it. The 2006 Act consolidated and modernised all the previous service discipline Acts and replaced them with a single system of service law that amounted to a complete overhaul of legislation on military law and service discipline. The Bill is, as the Secretary of State said, an important continuation of that Act that makes some modest but sensible changes.
The Bill’s contents concern the welfare, well-being and management of our service personnel. The previous Government had a strong record in that area, not just because of the introduction of the 2006 Act but because we ensured that forces’ pay increases were among the highest in the public sector, invested in accommodation and rehabilitation facilities and increased access to the NHS for dependants. The previous Government also published the service personnel Command Paper in 2008—the first cross-Government strategy on the welfare of armed forces personnel. That doubled compensation payments for the most serious injuries, doubled the welfare grant for the families of those on operations, gave better access to housing schemes and health care, offered free access to further education for service leavers with six years’ service and ensured more telephone and internet access for those deployed in Afghanistan.
Bob Russell
I acknowledge that the previous Government did a tremendous amount for the armed forces, but does the right hon. Gentleman accept that even after 13 years of Labour Government there is still a long way to go to bring much of the married housing accommodation for our brave soldiers—and presumably for airmen and naval personnel, but I am talking about the Army—up to an acceptable living standard?
Mr Murphy
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and the tone in which he makes it is above partisanship or politics. There is a constant pressure on all Governments to ensure that the families of the remarkable men and women whom we often vote to put in harm’s way are properly looked after here at home. I would encourage him—perhaps gently—to reflect on whether the Government that he so strongly supports, on most occasions, are putting the nation’s money where his mouth is. He has raised an important point and I know that Ministers will consider it. Ministers will be judged on their record on that matter.
The Bill is part of a wider body of work that seeks to ensure that the men and women who give awe-inspiring service and provide security not just in the UK but for all those they protect abroad can do their job to the highest order with the recognition they rightly deserve. It is right that the service police should have the powers they need and I welcome the increased powers passed to them in the Bill. I welcome, in particular, the provision on access to excluded material, which is essential in allowing successful investigations. It is also correct that we have proper checks and balances on the work of the service police, so I welcome the additional powers for Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to inspect their work. The Bill includes provisions to strengthen the structural independence of the police and to introduce a provost marshal to ensure that investigations are free from improper interference, which is an important development. The Bill also makes important changes to the service justice system, in particular by ensuring that service police disciplinary systems are compatible with and complementary to the European convention on human rights.
The Bill will make the lives of service personnel and civilians safer through the introduction of service sexual offences prevention orders to protect members of the service community outside the United Kingdom. I also welcome moves to strengthen the independence and impartiality of service complaints procedures as well as moves to update regulations to protect prisoners of war detained by UK forces.
I have a number of questions relating to the Bill and to the Government’s record on the military covenant to date, and I look forward to hearing the Minister answer some of them in his winding-up speech. Before the election, the Opposition said that repairing the broken military covenant was long overdue. Surely I am not the only one who now believes that there is a dramatic mismatch between this Government’s pre-election words and their post-election actions; the difference between the rhetoric and the reality is striking.
In October last year, the Secretary of State said that he would rebuild the military covenant, so, with a spring in his step, he launched a taskforce, which reported in December to much fanfare. He committed to taking forward two recommendations: first, that there should be an armed forces community covenant, encouraging volunteers to support their local forces; and, secondly, that there should be a commendation scheme to thank individuals or bodies that support the forces. As measures that the Secretary of State has claimed will strengthen the bonds between this country and the armed forces, they are worthy in name but not sufficient in action. No one who is serious about the military covenant considers those proposals to be substantive.
Vice-Admiral Sir Michael Moore, who is chairman of the Forces Pension Society, has described the taskforce’s proposals as:
“Incredibly wet and feeble. All flute music and arm waving”.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the change from RPI to CPI for pensions uprating will cost many service personnel dearly over their lives?
Dr Julian Lewis
I am sorry that the shadow Secretary of State is introducing a partisan note into this debate. As he has done so, however, does he agree that the introduction of plans for university scholarships for the children of armed services personnel who are killed in action is welcome, particularly in the light of certain changes to university charges on which he and I probably agree?
Mr Murphy
The hon. Gentleman is usually very fair in these debates, and I think he will acknowledge that I have already welcomed six or seven of the measures in the Bill in my speech. There is nothing wrong with echoing the comments of Vice-Admiral Sir Michael Moore, chairman of the Forces Pension Society, who has criticised the Government. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want to criticise Vice-Admiral Sir Michael Moore.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his consensuality, which I, as a service pensioner, welcome. Will he not recognise in his remarks, which are becoming a little partisan, that this Government doubled the operational allowance within days of the general election? I assume that he welcomed that.
Mr Murphy
I think that the hon. Gentleman called me the Secretary of State; of course, I am the shadow Secretary of State, but I am sure that will be corrected by Hansard. There are measures that we welcome, some of which I have alluded to already; I shall discuss some of the others later and will give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to intervene at that point if he wishes.
The Conservative manifesto pledged to ensure that our armed forces, their families and our veterans are properly taken care of, but the taskforce was tasked with finding
“innovative, low-cost policy ideas.”
It is difficult for any Government to find the right support for our armed forces on the cheap, without necessary and adequate funding. They have not yet responded to the work of the taskforce.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that the efforts and changes to maximise rest and recuperation for deployed personnel should be greatly welcomed? That issue has arisen in the past and the new Ministry has made great efforts to make improvements.
Dr Fox
The shadow Secretary of State asks why, seven months into government, we have not made more progress, but the previous Government left behind debt equivalent to £16,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. The interest on the deficit is greater than the defence budget for this year and the economic position is a strategic liability, so there is no point in the Opposition adopting a high moral tone—he was a member of the Cabinet who left us in this drastic economic position. He might consider his own culpability for our being in a position that makes it more difficult for us to achieve many of the things we want.
Mr Murphy
There we have it, Madam Deputy Speaker —the right hon. Gentleman advocates such a timid Bill because the cuts that he is determined to make in the Ministry of Defence will not allow him to achieve his ambition. I can do nothing more than quote again Sir Michael Moore, the chair of the Forces Pension Society, who said:
“I have never seen a Government erode the morale of the armed forces so quickly.”
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman’s thesis seems to be that we are not going far enough in repairing the damage to the military covenant. Does he remember the moment in 2007, shortly after Lord Guthrie resigned as Chief of the Defence Staff under his Ministry, when Lord Guthrie said in the House of Lords that he could not remember a Government ever having been so bad at keeping their side of the bargain and honouring the military covenant? The covenant was wrecked under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government and we are taking steps to put it right; surely he should acknowledge that.
Mr Murphy
We introduced the first cross-Government strategy on the welfare of the armed forces, we doubled compensation payments for the most seriously injured, we doubled the welfare grant for those in operation and we gave better access to housing schemes and health care. If the hon. Gentleman’s point is that Governments can and should always try to do more, of course that is the case, but it is difficult for him both to demand that Labour should have done more when in power and defend the level of his Government’s cuts. Those contradictory positions cannot be achieved in one intervention.
Mr Ainsworth
As we have descended into being a little partisan, let me ask whether my right hon. Friend remembers that as well as doubling the up-front payment for compensation, we introduced, through the auspices of Admiral Boyce, further improvements in the compensation scheme. One of the improvements that I was most concerned to secure was an increase above the rate of inflation for soldiers who were injured early in life, and therefore before their career had developed, to compensate them for the development that they would inevitably have made. However, the change from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index will take that money back from the very people who have benefited from the improvements that Admiral Boyce brought in on our behalf.
Mr Murphy
My right hon. Friend, a former Secretary of State for Defence, is rightly proud of the work that he did on the review, and of the way in which an effort was made to ensure that the families of those in the armed forces on the lowest pay had the in-built protection that if the worst happened to their loved one they would not be expected to live on very meagre support for decades. He should be eternally proud of the fact that such measures were introduced. I can only hope that as the Government take forward their proposals, those measures are protected, but there is strong doubt about that.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
If the armed forces were valued as much under the previous Administration, why, according to the continuous attitude survey, did only 32% of those serving in the armed forces feel sufficiently valued?
Mr Murphy
The fact is that, in previous years, in very difficult circumstances, the support available to our armed forces increased year on year—through pay, pensions and improvements in housing, health care and much else besides. If the hon. Gentleman’s challenge is that we did not do enough, of course there is always a challenge to do more, but it is difficult to demand that we should have done more to support the proposals that he is supporting today. He has to be a fiscal hawk or a fiscal dove on these issues; he cannot be both in the same intervention.
Sir Menzies Campbell
I hope that the shadow Secretary of State will not complain too much if I chide him a little for giving the impression that the morale of the armed forces has been dealt with in the way that Sir Michael Moore indicated. My regular contact with the armed forces is with RAF Leuchars, about which, as the shadow Secretary of State knows, there has been some unwelcome speculation. The professionalism and the intensity of the training that is performed there is unmatched. In the past week or so, the first Typhoon aircraft was scrambled from RAF Leuchars so that it could fulfil its responsibilities under the quick reaction alert. One has to be very careful about translating the remarks of someone who has an obvious, though quite legitimate, interest into general comment and criticism of the armed forces.
Mr Murphy
The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes a typically fair point in his own careful way. He is right to say that the constant challenge for politicians of all parties is how we support our armed forces and maintain their morale. My contention is that the Government have missed opportunities, and in Committee we will table amendments seeking further improvements to a Bill that makes sensible but modest improvements to our armed forces.
Charlie Elphicke
Does the shadow Secretary of State make the following connection, as I do? Perhaps only 32% of those in the armed forces felt valued because only 35%, as I understand it, felt that they had the right equipment in the field. Is it not important to ensure that our armed forces have appropriate equipment in the field?
Mr Murphy
There were record levels of investment and support provided, with regard to the kit and equipment of our armed forces in the field and in theatre. I say again that it is a constant challenge to get that equipment to them as quickly as we can, on cost and on budget. However, there is a wider issue that, if he was being fair, the hon. Gentleman would also have sought to address: the wider disconnect between the public and the military. Our nation is remarkably generous, particularly around Remembrance Sunday—in the weeks before it, and for some time after. I know that the hon. Gentleman will not take this as a partisan point, because it is not intended as such. We all have to reflect, as individuals, law makers and citizens, on how we ensure that that act of remembrance is not a Remembrance Sunday event, but an all-year-round event.
There is a wider issue about the level of connection and affiliation between our armed forces and our citizens at large. We are all in awe of our armed forces; if one asks any man or woman, or any young teenager in the street, one realises that they are in awe of the action that our armed forces take, but we can learn lessons from other nations, particularly now that our armed forces, after the horrors of the greater violence in Northern Ireland, are able more regularly to wear their uniform in public. That is one important change that will increase awareness of our armed forces. There is an issue about the armed forces’ morale, but there is also a wider issue about public sentiment that we have to address.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend rightly referred to the importance of remembrance. He is also right to identify the promises made by the then Conservative Opposition about veterans and their welfare. They said in their manifesto that they would sort out, in particular, the Christmas island veterans, who have been waiting for years and are still waiting for compensation.
Mr Murphy
As my hon. Friend knows, the previous Government offered a compensation deal. That was not resolved. The Government will rightly come forward with their own proposals. He and I will eagerly scrutinise the specifics of the proposals that the Government eventually produce.
I return to an issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the former Secretary of State, which is the subject of clause 2 —the annual publication of the armed forces covenant report. Although I strongly welcome the continuation of the previous Government’s plans to provide an annual report scrutinising the Government’s progress on implementing commitments to strengthen the covenant, it is troubling that responsibility for doing so has been moved from independent experts and into the political control of Ministers.
It is welcome that we will have a debate in the House on the military covenant, but that should not be at the expense of proper independent scrutiny. One of the innovations of 2008 was the impartial oversight of Government progress in strengthening the military covenant. The external reference group, comprising charities and civil servant experts, was established as an independent monitor of the Government’s implementation of the service Command Paper. This was vital in ensuring public confidence in our commitment to issues that transcend party politics.
It is peculiar and puzzling that the Government, who are committed to cuts in defence spending, now seem to have embarked on cuts in accountability in defence. [Interruption.] It is essential that the reports are independent, expert-led and above party politics. The Secretary of State is chuntering from a sedentary position. As he knows, the Royal British Legion has already raised concerns about the issue—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State says, with a cavalier swish of the hand, that he has already dealt with it. He has already spoken about it, but that is different from having dealt with it. The Royal British Legion should not be dismissed in such a cavalier way.
Ministers will have to work very hard to persuade anyone other than themselves that they are better placed than charities and experts, often comprising ex-service personnel and their families, to produce that report.
Mr Gray
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is a very beneficial improvement that rather than merely independent organisations scrutinising such reports, the Secretary of State will annually place a report before the House for its scrutiny? That is an increase in ministerial accountability and in the power of Parliament. Surely he should welcome that.
Mr Murphy
I have already welcomed the report and the fact that there will be an annual debate, but I do not welcome the fact that the production of the report will be in the hands of Ministers, rather than independent experts. It is an issue about which the Royal British Legion feels strongly.
Dr Murrison
The right hon. Gentleman has been generous in giving way. Can he define “independent”? I have attended a meeting of the external reference group and found it to be anything but. It is certainly made up, in part, of independent individuals, but also largely of officials, who can in no way be said to be independent of the Government.
Mr Murphy
I do not think Madam Deputy Speaker would welcome an attempt by me to provide the House with a definition of independence, but the fact that the three armed forces families federations are on the expert group gives it authority, independence, clarity and sincerity that, with the best will in the world, the most capable and sincere Minister cannot of himself provide. It is important that that work is continued.
My most serious concerns are about the proposals on armed forces pensions. The Government plan to link forces pension rises permanently to the consumer prices index, rather than to the retail prices index. That is a serious misjudgment and an indictment of the Government’s claim to want to strengthen the military covenant. We are in no doubt that in the current climate there is a need for restraint in public sector pay and pensions, but that year-on-year change will disproportionately affect members of the armed forces and their dependants, who rely on their pensions at earlier ages than almost anyone else.
The impact of the proposed changes will be devastating. A 27-year-old corporal who has lost both his legs in a bomb blast in Afghanistan will miss out on £500,000 in pension and benefit-related payments. War widows will also lose out enormously. The 34-year-old wife of a staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan would, over her lifetime, be almost £750,000 worse off.
There can be only two possible justifications for that policy. First, Ministers think it right to reduce year on year the support to forces personnel and their dependants, and support the policy presumably because they consider the current support to be unfairly generous. The Secretary of State did not support the policy on that basis today, nor I suspect will any Government Back Bencher.
The second possible reason for this heartless policy is deficit reduction, but that argument does not add up either. The impact of the measures will be felt long after the deficit has been paid down and the economy has returned to growth. I ask Ministers today to commit to rethink the policy or, in the absence of a full rethink, and if they believe that it is part of their deficit reduction plan, to consider a time-limited measure during the period of deficit reduction and spending restraint. That would be a fairer approach. There is no logical reason why the bravest British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan should see their pensions reduced for the rest of their lives, or why war widows, who have had the person most special to them taken away, deserve to have taken away from them the support on which they so depend.
When challenged on the issue in November, a Ministry of Defence spokesman said:
“It is not possible to treat the armed forces differently from other public servants.”
Bob Russell
The shadow Secretary of State heard me put my question to the Secretary of State. Was the shadow Secretary of State aware that war widows paid income tax on their war widows’ pension?
Mr Murphy
I was aware of that, and the hon. Gentleman will continue to make his case on it to the Government, but, with respect, although my point today is about the same issue, it is a slightly different one. Those who say, as the MOD spokesman said in November, that it is not possible to treat armed forces personnel differently from other public servants show a woeful and deeply worrying lack of understanding and respect for the unique nature of military service.
Service personnel, as many of us know, can be required to work unlimited hours in excessively dangerous conditions with no prospect of overtime or a bonus; they can be imprisoned for failing to show up; living conditions can, understandably, be very tough; they are often separated from family and loved ones for many months at a time; they can be compelled to return even after they have retired; they forgo several political freedoms and contractual rights that others rightly enjoy; and, as we know, they are at risk of being killed or horribly maimed as a direct result and an unavoidable consequence of their service. Often their pension is the only serious, tangible financial compensation available to them, and no Government should ever claim that it is not possible to distinguish in favour of our armed forces.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I am a little confused. Was the shadow Secretary of State not a member of the Government who went to court to fight to reduce compensation payments to wounded British soldiers returning from Afghanistan? His litany of righteous indignation does not sit well with that, so will he take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of the previous Government for that disgraceful action?
Mr Murphy
I cannot help the fact that the hon. Gentleman is confused; that is for him to resolve. The point is that, as part of the Boyce review, we are committed to increasing some of those payments. He calls it righteous indignation, and I do not know whether that is his attempt to justify the policy that his Government are implementing, but I do not think that it is righteous indignation to say that, if someone at this very moment serving in Afghanistan finds themselves in harm’s way, their wife, at home with their children, should reasonably expect decent support.
Mr Murphy
Of course, but, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your understanding, I recognise that time is against us. I have taken numerous interventions and others wish to speak, but I wonder whether I can entice the hon. Gentleman, if he wishes, to support the Government’s proposal for that change to pensions.
Alun Cairns
I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for giving way. I certainly support the actions of the Government in doubling the operational allowance. If the right hon. Gentleman thought so highly of the forces when he was a member of the previous Administration, why was the operational allowance pitched at such a low level?
Mr Murphy
The hon. Gentleman has got to his feet again and failed again. All I am asking today is that the Government listen to the arguments being made by the Royal British Legion, Help for Heroes and the families’ federations, and think again about the policy. I acknowledge that I was partisan about the other issue of scrutiny—[Interruption.] I am really making an appeal to justice and the better spirit of Government Members. They should reflect again on this issue.
Mr Ainsworth
Have I correctly understood the figures that my right hon. Friend has just cited? Given what he has just said, I now believe that the changes that are about to be introduced to the way in which the pension is calculated will not only remove all the improvements made by the Boyce review but go further and lead to levels of compensation for young injured soldiers that are lower than they were before the Boyce review. That is the very thing that the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) complained about in terms of the actions taken by the previous Government to keep the compensation scheme balanced. Is that right?
Mr Murphy
The Secretary of State shakes his head. I invite him to correct the record if he wishes. [Interruption.] He says from a sedentary position that he has plenty of time to do so. I give him the time today. [Interruption.] He says, “Get on with it.” Even the Secretary of State will not rise to his feet to support his own policy.
The military covenant goes to the heart of the relationship between the military, society and the Government, as the Secretary of State rightly said. It should and will never be the exclusive property of one political party. However, no Government can cut the support to Afghan war widows and claim to be honouring the military covenant. The truth is that this is a Government of convenience, who, in taking money from Afghan war widows, have lost the courage of their conscience.
The Government’s actions are particularly hard to comprehend when one considers that in July 2009 the previous Government published a Green Paper entitled “The Nation’s Commitment to the Armed Forces Community”, in which some truly innovative proposals were made. I invite the Secretary of State to look again at that Green Paper to see which aspects of it can be included in this Bill. I am surprised that the Government have not sought to take forward those ideas, which would not just give real help to the forces community but continue to demonstrate the Government’s commitment to serving the interests of those who put their lives on the line. I urge the Government to look again at the proposals.
This debate is also an opportunity for the Government to confirm that they will look again at another of their recent proposals, which in my view is one of their most regrettable decisions—the decision to scrap the chief coroner’s office. That office would give families who have lost those closest to them, often in tragic, painful and extremely complex circumstances, the right to the best possible investigations and military inquests into the deaths. Last month’s decision by the Lords, by a significant majority, to save the chief coroner’s office gives the Government the opportunity to think again. They should listen not only to the House of Lords but to the Royal British Legion, and retain the chief coroner’s office.
Today’s debate is an opportunity to further the passage of a Bill that in general we support. It will make sensible and important changes to procedures that will ensure that our armed forces can perform to the highest standards and are effectively regulated. But it is also more than that. It is an opportunity for the Government to think again—not about Afghanistan, where they should and rightly will remain resolute, but about cuts to the independent scrutiny of the Government’s progress on the covenant, about matching their pre-election pledges to their post-election actions and about the introduction of permanent reductions in the support of those who serve our nation and their families. If they do think again, there will be a very warm welcome not only in this House but, much more importantly, in the houses of service families across our nation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)
I am grateful to the many hon. Members who have participated in the debate. After hearing the rather fierce winding-up speech by the shadow Minister, I point out that two Labour Back Benchers participated in the debate and that substantially more Conservative Back Benchers took part, which shows how much interest there has been in the House.
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
No, not again.
I am sorry that I was not in the Chamber when the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) made his speech. [Interruption.] That is what it says here. He particularly seeks the maximum involvement of armed forces charities in the work of the covenant and that is absolutely what we want.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) talked about the heroism in the armed forces, recognised in Wootton Bassett in his constituency, and I think that we all agree on that. He welcomed our commitment to the armed forces covenant and the fact that our manifesto commitment will be kept, but he should watch how the issue develops, because I think that he will be more satisfied than I understand he appeared to be in his speech. The provision is not a “sad little clause”; it is an important step forward in fulfilling our obligations to the armed forces.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) for his service in Afghanistan. I was glad to hear that he welcomed clause 2 and was critical of the previous Government’s record on the covenant. It seems rather strange that we get criticised for all these things after seven or eight months, whereas I seem to remember that the previous Government were there for 13 years.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) asked us to go the extra mile for the armed forces. He is absolutely right. They are in a unique position, and we should and will go that extra mile; we are committed to doing so. He talked about service family accommodation. We are working on improving quality. I recently cut the turf on a new estate, the Canadian estate in Bulford. It was put on hold under the last Government, but we have started again. There is, of course, a big issue about cost. We are also working towards greater home ownership. My hon. Friend may know of the new employment model, which will mean that the Army will tend to be based more in the same place, rather than moving around the country.
I heard the plea that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) made for Armed Forces day in Plymouth, and we will certainly consider that. I absolutely agree with his central point, which is that we must make the armed forces feel valued. I know that I am a bit older than some people on the Opposition Front Bench—
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.
Mr Murphy
The right hon. Gentleman tempts me to rise, and I encourage the Secretary of State to rise to defend his policy. The question is whether it is right to take away from war widows and those who were severely injured on the battlefield in Afghanistan pension entitlement that they had reasonably expected. Perhaps the Minister should focus less on what will be in our manifesto in two, three or four years, and more on his policy this very evening. He should try at least to do what the Secretary of State failed to do and defend his own policy.
Mr Robathan
After that extremely long intervention, I notice that the right hon. Gentleman did not answer the question. He says that we are taking money away from people. We are doing nothing of the kind. That is scaremongering. We are changing the indexation going forward, as he is well aware. We must address the huge debt left behind by the previous Government. [Interruption.]. Opposition Members are obviously in denial. That is what we have to do.
The Bill is important, as I have explained, because it is part of parliamentary control of the armed forces. It provides the legal basis for the armed forces to exist. Without it, there would be some rather interesting and difficult situations.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jim Murphy Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Fox
The capabilities speak for themselves. There have been enormous leaps in what the Afghan forces can do. The Afghan national army has conducted itself honourably and with great credit in terms of its technical ability, not least in Kandahar, and the Afghan national police are now moving ahead, for two reasons. First, the police were given equal pay status with the ANA, and secondly, along with that, literacy training led to a big increase in the quality of those joining. That is a major step forward from where we were in recent years.
Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
No one doubts the bravery of many of those joining the Afghan security forces—it is beyond doubt—but the Secretary of State will be aware that there are still worries about the quality of current training, the levels of desertion from the Afghan forces, and the very few cases in which some in the Afghan forces have turned their weapons on those in the international security assistance force. This is a crucial issue, because success in Afghanistan depends on it, so will he support increased international effort to improve the training and resilience of Afghan forces on the ground?
Dr Fox
Indeed, I will. The right hon. Gentleman makes a crucial point. The international community, if it wants to be truly successful, must recognise that this is about not just the numbers but the capability. Those who intend to transition away from a combat role would do well therefore to put the resources into increased training in Afghanistan to ensure that what the international community sets out to do is achieved.
Dr Fox
It would have been highly desirable to make the changes that we envisage ahead of the elections next May. It is unlikely that we will be able to do so in that time frame, but it is clear that change is needed. It is primarily a matter for the Ministry of Justice, but we have had a number of ministerial discussions between the two Departments to try to clarify those plans and to ensure that we have a legislative slot to enable us to implement them as quickly as possible.
Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
We have heard again today that our armed forces are helping to create new freedoms in Afghanistan. Here at home, the right to protest peacefully is crucial, but in recent days we have seen the appalling violation of the Cenotaph. Will the Secretary of State support an all-party cross-Government approach to see whether our war memorials, which are engraved with the names of many of our country’s heroes, are properly protected from the actions of the few of our country’s mindless hooligans?
Dr Fox
I fully associate myself with the comments of the shadow Defence Secretary. There must be outrage across this country at some of the scenes that we witnessed last week. In particular, it might be worth emphasising in the House to those students who took part in some of those demonstrations and who seem to take the freedoms that they have so much for granted that those freedoms were won by the sacrifices of previous generations, the names of whom are commemorated on some of those monuments. They deserve to be treated with far greater respect than they were last week.
Oral Answers to Questions
Jim Murphy Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that this weekend thousands of people marched in Lossiemouth against the proposed closure of the RAF base there. That base accounts for about 10% of jobs in the area. Some will argue that the proposed closure saves the MOD money, but in truth other parts of government will have to pick up the costs of increased unemployment and the failure of small businesses. May I therefore urge him to pause and think again about the devastating wider impacts that this proposed closure would have?
Dr Fox
First, may I welcome the shadow Secretary of State and his entire team to Question Time for the first time?
Let me say at the outset that neither party in the coalition wanted to see redundancies in the armed forces, and we would not be making such redundancies had we not been handed an utterly poisonous economic legacy by Labour and, indeed, a Ministry of Defence budget that was massively overheated and incompetently run. Having said that, we are very well aware of the various consequences—social, economic and regional—of the whole question of basing. I give the right hon. Gentleman my absolute assurance that we will consider all those elements when we look at the future of Lossiemouth.
Mr Murphy
Returning to the issue raised by the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), we are all rightly in awe of the men and women of our armed forces, and I welcome the commitment that the Government have given to continuing to protect the front line in Afghanistan. However, the Government have announced redundancies of 7,000 in the Army, 5,000 in the Navy and 5,000 in the RAF—17,000 in total. Will the Secretary of State therefore guarantee that no one who has served in Afghanistan will face compulsory redundancy?
Dr Fox
It would not be possible for the Government to say that no one who had ever served in Afghanistan in any way, shape or form since 2001 would not be made redundant. I reiterate what I have said: that because we need to maintain the Afghan rotation, no one currently serving in Afghanistan, or on notice to deploy, will face compulsory redundancy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)
I must honestly say to the House that this was one of the most difficult decisions we were forced to take as a result of the mess in the national finances and the grossly overheated MOD budget that we inherited. Since the withdrawal of the Nimrod MR2 in March, the Ministry of Defence has mitigated the gap in capability through the use of other military assets, including Type 23 frigates, Merlin anti-submarine warfare helicopters and Hercules C-130 aircraft, and by relying, where appropriate, on assistance from allies and partners. That was originally assumed to be a short-term measure. We are now developing a longer-term plan to mitigate the impact of cancellation on our continuing military tasks and capabilities.
Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
Regardless of what side of the House we are on, we are all very concerned about this weekend’s reports of the smuggling of highly enriched uranium in Georgia and other parts of the Soviet Union—[Interruption.] I mean the former Soviet Union. We know there is sometimes only one step between organised criminals and global terrorists. In the light of those reports, can the Secretary of State guarantee that any UK-funded projects to combat the proliferation of, or trade in, chemical, biological and nuclear material will have their funding protected through this spending review period?
Dr Fox
I could not be in greater agreement with the right hon. Gentleman. It is easy to forget that there has been a great deal of nuclear material out there. Not only does that still pose a threat to global security, but the development of new nuclear weapons by countries such as North Korea and, soon, Iran, which is attempting a programme, presents us with a massive threat. It is essential that programmes that give this country protection are themselves protected.
Strategic Defence and Security Review
Jim Murphy Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond in today’s debate and I welcome the Secretary of State’s comments. At the beginning at least, his was a rather breathless speech. He spoke of being 109 years of age when the new Queen Elizabeth type aircraft carriers go out of service, but I hope he leaves more time to get to the Chamber from the Ministry of Defence when he is 109. He certainly will not be able to get here at the speed he did today.
Earlier in the week, the Secretary of State had to be summoned to the House to explain in detail the treaties with France, and today the House was treated to a quite remarkable filibuster to accommodate his diary and those of his fellow Ministers. I was tempted to reflect that perhaps they were on French time, but that would have brought them here in time for business questions rather than making them late for this debate. I welcome the ministerial team, who took the approach of arriving in shifts for their boss’s speech this afternoon.
Despite that, it is with a sense of honour that today I am making my first speech at the Dispatch Box as the shadow Secretary of State for Defence. My sense of pride is only slightly diminished by having the word “shadow” in my job title.
Mr Murphy
I hope it will not be for too long. Even in opposition, it is an honour to work to support our armed forces and their families, and the defence of our nation and all our interests. The most important responsibility of the Government is the safety and security of our country. All MPs of all parties also carry that responsibility. I want the House to know that this Opposition will always act in the interests of what we believe to be right for our country, and not any narrow party interest.
Although the Secretary of State and I may disagree across the Dispatch Box, I want to tell him that I will never question his personal commitment to the defence of our nation. All Conservatives are patriots, but the Secretary of State must be aware that all patriots are not Conservatives. Therefore, I look forward to working with the Government to ensure that our forces, who are the best of Britain, operate with the right equipment. I also want to ensure that their service to their country is properly rewarded and valued, and where possible, that even more is done to value their dedication and patriotism. In addition, we should also recognise the crucial role played by so many MOD civilian staff, as the Secretary of State did. I should like to put on record the House’s gratitude for the unheralded work of our security services.
I thought that the Secretary of State, in what was in large part a thoughtful speech, struck a better tone on the issue of MOD redundancies than has been struck before. Hitherto, there was almost a sense of celebration at the reduction in head count. It will be reassuring for MOD officials, who are perhaps watching this debate or will read Hansard, that there was no waving of Order Papers today at the announcement of potential future redundancies.
As the Prime Minister has rightly said in recent times, our power and influence is enhanced by our integration with political, social and economic global networks. However, I sense that the unprecedented scale and pace of global change will, if anything, increase ever more sharply in future. Although our openness increases the threats that we face, conversely it assists us, in part, in overcoming those contemporary challenges. Today’s threats are more complex and difficult to map, and they are harder to repel. Terrorism, cyber-attack, natural resource shortages, large-scale disaster or unconventional attacks from chemical or biological weapons all threaten our shores, our interests and our values. Although we might face fewer conventional threats, our defences at home remain subject to frequent aerial and maritime probing and challenges.
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”.
It seems that the security review did not clearly define Britain’s place in the world, nor did it alter the balance of Britain’s armed forces to meet existing and emerging threats. The review leaves unanswered many questions about Britain’s place in this ever-changing world.
Mr Murphy
I will come to that later in my comments, but it is clear that Britain must make a pragmatic assessment of our global ambition. As the Secretary of State has acknowledged—tersely in his letter and, I am sure, in private conversations with others in government—the review process has been driven largely by the cuts that the Government have been determined to make. Some people say that the 38-page document to which the Secretary of State referred looks like a decent executive summary, but no fewer than 10 pages in it are entirely blank. In parts, it lacks historical accuracy. On page 23, we read:
“For 800 years, the UK has been at the forefront of shaping the relationship between the rights of individuals and powers and obligations of the state”.
The document predicts future threats, which cannot be an exact science—we know that—but it lacks historical accuracy. The fact is that the UK did not exist in its current form 800 years ago. A document that aims to set out a process and to predict the nature of future threats does not even get its history right. Its assessment of our nation’s past lacks real intellectual vigour—[Interruption.] One of the Ministers who arrived a little late for the Secretary of State’s speech says that that is a pedantic point, but I do not think that it is. To say that they do not understand the nature or the history of this collection of nations of the United Kingdom when it comes to an assessment of our role in the world is not pedantic.
There are major challenges facing our national security, as the Secretary of State has said, and as was emphasised only last weekend, with the bomb plots to bring down cargo planes. The defence review rightly makes it clear that primary among the myriad defence and security issues we face is Afghanistan.
I, my shadow Defence team and the shadow Foreign Secretary appreciated the first of what I hope will be many regular briefings on Afghanistan held yesterday in the Ministry of Defence. I also look forward to the opportunity to visit Afghanistan, and of course I, along with others on the Opposition Front Bench, will liaise with the MOD about such visits. I want to make it clear that we will work with the Government in a spirit of co-operation to help to bring the conflict to an end, and to ensure peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. Our forces—and, indeed, our enemies—should continually be reminded of that unity of purpose. Our military aim must be to ensure that never again can al-Qaeda use Afghanistan as an incubator for terrorism, and we must use our military forces to weaken the Taliban to such an extent that the Afghan people can determine their own future.
Mike Gapes
May I join others who will no doubt welcome my right hon. Friend to his new role? His was an excellent appointment. I was in Afghanistan last week with the Foreign Affairs Committee, and we also went to Pakistan. Does he agree that although the international community—or some of it, at least—has set deadlines, there should be conditions-based activity in Afghanistan, and that the international community might need to think again about what will be needed in the future, if the proposed increase in the capabilities of the Afghan forces are not sufficient by 2015?
Mr Murphy
I have spoken to my hon. Friend and others who were on that visit to Afghanistan, and they commented on what they believed to be the significant progress made there in recent years. No doubt he would like to put that on the record as well. It is significant and important for the Government to continue to offer clarity about the conditions-based approach to the 2015 timeline; I am sure that the Secretary of State will have heard those comments and will seek to reassure the House and the nation on that matter.
The international strategy, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) saw on his visit, has been focusing on building up key pillars of the state and delivering better lives for the Afghan people. There is a real record of sometimes fragile achievement being carefully built upon in Afghanistan, and it is the bravery of our forces, which is renowned across the globe—we all celebrate that again today—and their professionalism, which we must also recognise, that has helped to make that progress achievable.
Mrs Moon
Does my right hon. Friend agree that when the British press write about the Afghan campaign, one of the problems is that we conflate Afghanistan and Helmand, although the severe problems that Britain is facing in Helmand are often not the same in the rest of the country? We must make it clear to the British public that outside Helmand there are positive conditions prevailing, good signs of development and huge progress being made. We are at the front line of the most difficult task, but we must not neglect the fact that huge successes have also been achieved.
Mr Murphy
My hon. Friend, who has paid close attention to these matters over a long time, is right. Those of us who supported the decision to take military action in Iraq and who supported the action in Afghanistan appreciate that those two conflicts have been conflated in public perception, which has not helped the debate about Afghanistan. She raised an important point about the misunderstanding and misapprehension about Helmand province. We heard from the MOD yesterday that Helmand province accounts for 1% of Afghanistan’s population. The UK’s forces are engaged in some of the heaviest fighting, and in some of the most difficult and most complex areas of the insurgency, but there has been remarkable progress, in Helmand and in other parts of Afghanistan. It is right that she has put that on the record, and that we celebrate it here.
The work that is going on in justice, law and order, civil administration, economic activity and freedom of movement in Helmand and Afghanistan, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) will have seen and read about, is a cornerstone of a lasting political settlement, as are efforts to eradicate institutionalised corruption. Part of such a settlement relies on meaningful engagement with former insurgents. As a precondition for engagement, those who want a political stake in their country’s future must permanently sever ties with violence and accept the Afghan constitutional framework. In doing so, their interests will be recognised but constrained by the laws of the land and balanced by the interests and views of others. As the Government take that important work forward, they will continue to have the Opposition’s full support.
I want to address a number of the points that the Secretary of State has made about Afghanistan recently. The first concerns the role of women in Afghan society. Many now rightly assess that women’s role in Afghanistan has improved markedly beyond the pre-Taliban days in Afghanistan. Things continue to improve more slowly than we might wish. Nevertheless they have improved significantly, and I urge the Government to remain vigilant and ensure that, as former Taliban fighters are reintegrated, the welcome progress made in guaranteeing freedom and equal rights for women is not compromised in accommodating those with harder-line opinions.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South said, the Government have set 2015 as a target for the conclusion of our forces’ combat role. We all wish to see our forces home as soon as possible. When I, along with my right hon. Friends the leader of the Labour party and the shadow Foreign Secretary, met General Petraeus recently, we talked about the conditions-based progress towards full withdrawal. It is essential that the UK Government are clear in private and public about the stages and conditions in advance of our withdrawal.
Crucial to Afghan and international ambition is the capacity of home-grown security forces to take on greater responsibility. It is important for the Government to make it clear whether they have undertaken an assessment of the capacity of Afghan forces to meet the 2015 timeline. Although the immediate concern about the quantity of recruits has abated—with 305,000 now in service—there remain genuine worries about the quality of some of those undoubtedly brave recruits. There is clearly a shortage of trainers for the Afghan forces, and although the UK is doing its bit, it is essential for that fundamental issue to be resolved quickly if the Afghan security forces are to be able to perform the functions that the Afghan Government wish them to. I urge the Government, therefore, to continue to monitor not just the quantity but the quality of the Afghan security forces. There is also, of course, a wider societal issue in Afghanistan concerning levels of literacy, which impact on the ability of the Afghan armed forces—but that is a longer term societal challenge.
Finally, on Afghanistan, we welcome the commitments that the Secretary of State and Prime Minister have given in assuring the House that the impact of the defence review is not intended to affect the front line in Afghanistan. However, Opposition Members—and, I am certain, many Government Members—will be seeking a constant assurance that nothing in the small print of the defence review or those flowing from it will affect our efforts in Afghanistan right up until the end of combat operations.
More widely, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) asked about Yemen. The Leader of the Opposition rightly asked the Prime Minister about that at Prime Minister’s questions this week, and we were reassured by the Prime Minister’s response. It is important that Yemen does not become a safe haven for terrorist recruitment, training and operations. It is also important that the country’s economic decline and instability do not threaten regional security and economic interests. Continued conflict and loss of livelihoods could result in increasing poverty and a humanitarian crisis, and mass migration within the country and beyond. It is crucial, therefore, that we work with the Yemeni Government to counter the terror threat, including through our support in helping them to disrupt al-Qaeda.
Terrorism, however, is not the only threat facing Yemen. Al-Qaeda looks to exploit instability where it can, and it is of strategic importance for the UK to remain engaged in Yemen.
Keith Vaz
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State on his appointment, and welcome his wise words today. Let us get the language on Yemen right. It is not a failed state, as some have said, but it has the capacity to fail if we do not assist it. We must follow up the promises made to the Yemeni Government in London in January to provide basic help, such as security scanners, which I understand have still not been delivered. Let us help Yemen and engage with it, rather than criticising it.
Mr Murphy
My right hon. Friend is experienced in such matters, and he is right to raise that point. So far today we have not heard anyone speaking of Yemen as a failed state, but it has the capacity to become so, with all that that means. I am sure that the Government heard my right hon. Friend’s plea for scanners. The Prime Minister was asked about that at Question Time on Wednesday, and gave a categoric commitment to continue to be engaged in Yemen. In addition to the scanners being delivered, I look forward to the Government making it clear that ministerial engagement will continue, with visits to Yemen in the near future. It is important for that political public commitment to be there for all to see.
There are points in the review that I and many others welcome: the commitment to hold reviews every five years, taking forward the previous Government's work on cyber-crime to prevent organised crime, terrorism and other states from making malign attacks on our infrastructure, the 25% reduction in warheads, and the continued commitment to increase funding for our special forces. However, among all the talk of fiscal deficits, I want now to turn to the strategic deficit at the heart of the Government’s plans.
There are strategic contradictions between the Government’s assessment of future threats, as laid out in the security strategy, and the tangible action to prepare for them, as laid out in the defence review. Those two documents were separated by just one day in their publication, but face in different directions in important ways. The security strategy rightly says that it will prioritise flexibility and adaptability across the armed forces, but the defence review surrenders some of that capacity in the Royal Navy. The Government said that they wanted to take tough long-term decisions, but have put off Trident—to appease their coalition partners, I think .
Mr Murphy
There are no coalition party Back-Bench Members here to disagree, so I hope that the one belated arrival on the Front Bench does not take offence.
Some people believe that the decision on Trident owes more to defence of the coalition than to defence of the realm. The security strategy marks a significant shift with an emphasis on mitigating risk, the ability to deter, and the attributes of soft power. All that is rightly contained in the security strategy. However, the defence review lacks emphasis on cultural and diplomatic power in complementing traditional hard power. Indeed, the comprehensive spending review may have set back the cause of cultural diplomacy by many years. Moving the World Service, which has been so important to so many people in so many ways, from the Foreign Office may signify a serious scaling down of cultural diplomacy.
I grew up—or at least, spent all my teenage years—in South Africa, where people had to be bilingual in English and Afrikaans. I remember watching the news on television and listening to South African radio, and even as youngsters we knew instinctively that we could not trust what we were hearing, regardless of what language it was in. Whether it was in English or Afrikaans, we knew that it was state propaganda. The only place to turn to, which my family did, was the BBC’s World Service. It was the one source of accurate and reliable information that people throughout the world regularly turned to at times of difficulty or when seeking the truth. Labour Members will continue to take a keen interest in what moving the World Service from the Foreign Office will mean to quality and reach in different languages throughout the globe.
Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)
Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that the role that the World Service could play in a country like Pakistan, where obviously we cannot and would not wish to send troops, is vital to the stability of the region, and would help our effort in Afghanistan?
Mr Murphy
The right hon. Gentleman is correct, and we can compete in our admiration of the BBC’s World Service and all that it does, including the launch of the Arabic service relatively recently, the broadcasting in Pashtun, and the fact that President Obama used the medium of the World Service to broadcast. We are occasionally frustrated with some things that the BBC does, but in principle, as an institution, the World Service is something that everyone in this country who feels a sense of pride and patriotism should be remarkably proud of.
Mr Dai Havard
(Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney): As someone who lives in Wales, I regularly listen to the World Service, for reasons similar to those that my right hon. Friend gave for listening to it in South Africa: we have a colonial Government these days. I echo the point made by the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Defence Committee, that in Helmand province particularly, and other parts of Afghanistan, the really important medium of information is the radio. It is not the television, or Fox News, as it is in America. The power of what the right hon. Gentleman said is palpable to anyone who visits the place.
Mike Gapes
Reference has been made to Pakistan. My right hon. Friend may not be aware that the BBC World Service gave evidence to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and said that because of financial restrictions, it could not go ahead with an Urdu language television service that it had hoped to establish. Does he agree that that is highly regrettable, and that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, while it has responsibility for funding the World Service for the next two years, should reconsider?
When I was in the Negev desert, I met Bedouin tribesmen who talked about the power of the BBC World Service, which again is the one source of reliable and objective information in that part of the world. I do not want to labour the point, but I am certain that we will return to it, as it has arisen in the comprehensive spending review.
The Government said in the defence review that they wanted to combat emerging threats, but we have heard little, in the review or since, about concrete plans to address threats to energy, food or water security. Thanks to the review, the Secretary of State’s to-do list has grown. I do not doubt his ability, but he will have a packed day. Rather than announcing details in the review, the Government have delayed decisions until another day. A review has been set up to consider plans for procurement. Rather than coming up with a strategy for integrating, a review has been set up; rather than setting out efficiency savings in detail, a review has been set up; force generation, counter-terrorism and preparedness for civil emergencies are all subject to review. Add to that the fact that the plethora of parliamentary questions suggest that the Government have not done their homework, and that they must do better. Their strategy has been rushed, they did not ask many of the right questions, and they still have not come up with many answers.
I look forward to playing a full part in many of the reviews, but the sheer number is further proof that the entire process has been rushed. At the heart of the strategic incoherence is the back-to-front decision making leading to the review. For all the claims of cross-Government co-operation, the defence review has become a spending review—cutting what could be cut to meet fiscal priorities, not doing what could be done to reshape Britain’s armed forces around strategic security goals. To answer the strategic questions, we needed a thorough examination of foreign policy flexibility, defence needs and how to make defence more efficient in the longer term, not simply a drive for immediate savings now.
Let me turn to some of the other points that the Secretary of State mentioned. On Nimrod, I welcome his commitment to share what he can with the shadow Foreign Secretary and me. However, there is a sense of disquiet in the country about the impact on the deterrent, and there are particular worries in parts of Scotland about the impact on air force bases.
Let me turn to the aircraft carriers, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), the former Defence Secretary, has spoken of. We already know that for a decade or more, the UK will have no carrier strike capability of its own. The Government have entered into two 50-year defence treaties with France, and although we welcome them in principle, there are still many unanswered questions. In opposition, the Conservatives played fast and loose with Euroscepticism when the Labour Government mooted defence co-operation. By contrast, we welcome a bilateral approach with our European neighbours. We will continue to support those efforts and ask the important questions. We are not clear whether those treaties, which have now been deposited in the Library, will contain legally binding guarantees. Last week in response to questions, the Prime Minister told the House:
“It is not easy to see in the short term the need for that sort of carrier strike”.—[Official Report, 19 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 808.]
Given the nature of those documents and the nature of the threat, the fact is that there is enormous uncertainty. Despite what the Prime Minister has said, and despite the fact that the title of the Government’s own strategy document refers to an “age of uncertainty”, they have not been able to persuade the country that they feel certain that we will not need carrier strike capability over the next decade. As the Chair of the Select Committee on Defence has asked, if the Government feel sure that we can do without that ability for a decade, why are they equally sure that we will not need a strike capability once that decade has passed? Our approach has led to our friends passing polite comment, while others snigger up their sleeves about a maritime nation building the two greatest ships in our history while the country is devoid of carrier strike capability for a decade.
In conclusion, I share the worry of many in this House and beyond the Commons—a worry echoed in the Defence Committee’s report. The process has been rushed. Mistakes may have been made, and some of them may be serious. With respect, I hope that the Defence Committee is wrong, but I fear that it may be right. I want to finish my comments in the same tone in which I started. Nine years into a military commitment in Afghanistan, and with up to five more in a combat role ahead for our country and our forces, it is essential that we again commit ourselves to a bipartisan approach to Afghanistan. For all our disagreements on so many other issues facing our country, we are at one in supporting our forces as they face up to our enemies, and their families as they start to think of another Christmas separated from their loved ones. As our country comes together this week to commemorate the lives of those who have been lost in conflict through the ages, it is also right that today we celebrate the enormous contribution and immeasurable bravery of our men and women in uniform.
Defence Treaties (France)
Jim Murphy Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement about the treaties today between the UK and France on defence.
The Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Liam Fox)
First, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to Sapper William Blanchard from 101 (City of London) Engineer Regiment (Explosive Ordnance Disposal), who died on operations in Afghanistan on Saturday. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends at this dreadful time for them.
The Prime Minister and President Sarkozy this afternoon signed two treaties that mark a deepening of the UK-France bilateral relationship. The two treaties will next be laid before Parliament, allowing hon. Members the opportunity to consider them as part of the process towards ratification. For the added convenience of Members, I hope that the texts of both treaties will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses today.
The UK-France relationship is a strategic partnership of sovereign nations, working together to tackle the biggest challenges facing our two countries, at a new level of co-operation. The treaties do not diminish in any way our ability to act independently when the national interest requires, but they do provide us with greater capability when we decide to act together. The UK welcomed the recent French decision to rejoin NATO’s integrated military structure. We believe it is good for NATO, good for the UK and good for France. It makes sense for us now to achieve maximum interoperability, greater commonality of doctrine and more efficient use of equipment. Closer co-operation with France will also provide better value for money for the British taxpayer.
Let me give the House a sense of the scope of both treaties. First, the defence and security co-operation treaty will develop closer co-operation between our armed forces, the sharing and pooling of materials and equipment, the building of joint facilities, mutual access to each other’s defence markets, and industrial and technological co-operation. The treaty provides the framework, and details will emerge over time as more detailed work is done.
The second treaty covers collaboration in the technology associated with nuclear stockpile stewardship in support of our respective independent nuclear deterrent capabilities in full compliance with our international obligations. The treaty provides for the joint construction and operation of a new hydrodynamics facility at Valduc in France and a technology development centre at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. These facilities will be operational from 2015. This programme, named Teutates, will assist both countries in maintaining the safety and reliability of their respective nuclear stockpiles and will improve expertise in countering nuclear terrorism. The facilities will enable each country to undertake hydrodynamic experiments in a secure environment. The hydrodynamic facilities use radiography to measure the performance of materials at extremes of temperature and pressure. This enables us to model the performance and safety of the nuclear weapons in our stockpile without undertaking nuclear explosive tests.
The UK will maintain its independent nuclear deterrent and will continue to work towards the long-term objective of a world without nuclear weapons. Today’s summit is only the start of a long-term deepening of the UK-France bilateral relationship. France is the UK’s natural partner in Europe for defence co-operation. France and the UK have some of the most capable and experienced armed forces and the largest defence industry. We are by a long way Europe’s two biggest defence spenders. Achieving the envisaged level of co-operation will take time and will require changes to long-established ways of working. We will put in place measures to deliver long-term commitment to joint projects and we expect to announce new areas of work at regular intervals.
A stronger defence relationship with France does not mean a weaker relationship with the United States, our main strategic partner, or with Germany or any other partner—quite the reverse. The increased capability and effectiveness that we will achieve through this co-operation will make us stronger partners. In the multilateral context also, our NATO allies and EU partners want UK and French forces, as well as those of other nations, to be as capable and interoperable as possible—exactly what the new Government programme of co-operation is intended to achieve.
Mr Murphy
The whole House joins the Secretary of State in offering condolences to the family of Sapper William Blanchard who died while showing remarkable bravery in serving our country. All our thoughts and many of our prayers are with his family and friends.
Today is historically important for our nation’s defence: our country is entering into two defence treaties with France. The treaties, which we are told will last for 50 years, cover aircraft carrier capability, shared nuclear infrastructure and joint rapid reaction capability. The UK media, the French media, the French National Assembly, and our allies in the United States and across world capitals have been informed of the contents of the agreement; with the announcements about this strategic shift in defence, it is a very real pity that the House of Commons seems to be the only place kept in the dark. After the summoning of the world’s media to Downing street to witness the signing of the agreements, I am sure that the Secretary of State does not mind being invited to Parliament to explain the Government’s thinking.
For almost 700 years, for historical reasons of the old alliance between Scotland and France, the House of Commons has traditionally had a degree of reticence about a Scot arguing for a military arrangement with France, but on this occasion most of us on both sides of the House support and welcome in principle further steps to improve what is already a very strong relationship. That approach makes sense for two strategic reasons. First, the UK and France face many common threats across the world, including global terrorism, cyber-security and piracy on the high seas. Secondly, as the Secretary of State has mentioned, the UK and France have unique capacities. They are the two largest investors in defence capability in Europe and among the highest in the world, significant players in the EU and the only two EU member states with permanent seats at the UN, as well as our independent nuclear deterrent.
In supporting this general approach of closer co-operation, I want to ask the Secretary of State some specific questions. I seek an absolute guarantee that the agreements that have been entered into today do not place any limitation whatever on the UK’s ability to act independently in all circumstances in the protection of our unique interests across the world, including the defence of our overseas territories and in respect of the deployment of our armed forces or our military assets.
Turning to the specific agreement on aircraft carriers, the Government’s intention is to share capacity when our respective carriers are in refit. The UK is currently building two Queen Elizabeth class carriers. As we understand it, one of our carriers will be placed in extended readiness. The question that many will be asking is what guarantees we have, when it is France’s responsibility to provide carrier capability, if we disagree.
We hope and expect that the UK and France will increasingly find common cause, but there is no guarantee that that will be the case in all circumstances over the next 50 years. Reflection on even the past few years shows that that was not the case on the Falklands, Desert Fox in 1998, Sierra Leone and of course the Iraq war. Can the Secretary of State give some assurances about guarantees of UK capability and support?
Are the treaties legally binding on both the United Kingdom and France? If they are, who adjudicates in the event of a dispute about legal purpose and meaning? The seven-sentence written ministerial statement that the Prime Minister tabled to the House today states:
“The treaties will be laid before Parliament in the usual way.”
May I invite the Secretary of State to say a little more, based on what he has already said, about how that will be handled?
In opposition, the Conservative party tabled motions to amend multilateral European treaties. In the light of that, is it the Government’s view that the treaty is amendable by Parliament now or in the future? In the light of the Government’s commitment to have five-yearly defence and security reviews, will it be necessary to update the treaties as the capabilities of the two nations are adjusted every five years?
I welcome what the Secretary of State said about nuclear co-operation. I welcome the commitment to bring greater efficiencies in infrastructure for our nuclear capabilities, but can the Secretary of State confirm to the House that that does not in any way jeopardise the bilateral arrangement between ourselves and the United States and the 1958 mutual defence agreement?
On employment, the Secretary of State spoke about access to markets. Will he say a few words about sovereign intellectual capability and employment as a consequence of today’s announcement? Will he guarantee, for example, that when the UK carrier goes in for a refit, that will take place in a UK shipyard? Has he been able to persuade the French that their carrier should go into a UK yard as well?
Finally—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am extremely grateful to the shadow Secretary of State. May I very gently say that the Secretary of State modestly exceeded his allotted time, and the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) has rather significantly exceeded his allocated time? [Interruption.] No, that is the end of it. In future we must stick to these times, otherwise it is grotesquely unfair on Back-Bench Members. The times are known. The times are communicated both to the Government and to the Opposition, and they must be followed. That is the end of it.