Armed Forces

Leo Docherty Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I have a couple of housekeeping announcements before we kick off the debate. First, you may have noticed that the clock that we are working to is running about 40 seconds behind the annunciator clock. That will become relevant later when I put a time limit on speeches, because a lot of Members want to take part this afternoon. Secondly, in view of the climate, I am prepared to allow gentlemen to remove their jackets if they wish—but not their ties under this Chairman, thank you very much.

[Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future shape of the armed forces.

As the new Member for Aldershot, the traditional home of the British Army, I am honoured to lead the debate. In the limited time I have, I will touch on the nature of current threats and dwell for a little longer on my central point, which is that our people—our servicemen and women—must be at the heart of our defence policy.

When we consider the future shape of the armed forces, we are seeking to assess current threats but also to predict what threats may arise in the future. That is very difficult, and the only certainty we have is that threats are and will continue to be manifold and deeply alarming. After 15 years or so of engaging in counter-insurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, we still face a threat from global terrorism, which is more dangerous, more mobile and more transnational than ever before. It has recently struck in our cities, and, indeed, at the very gates of Parliament. The middle east is highly unstable, ISIS is diminished but not defeated, we have failed states, we have Hezbollah, we have a dominant Iran and we have North Korea in nuclear stand-off with the rest of the world. We also have a resurgent Russia and the rise of cyber-conflicts.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that one vital element of our national defence and resilience is the threat to our cyber-security? Is he concerned, as I am, about whether our armed forces and their hardware are fully protected from that threat, and whether they have sufficient capability to be effectively deployed to deter such a threat?

[Leo Docherty]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern. I think we all agree that the internet has now been weaponised to an extremely alarming degree. That should be at the heart and centre of our defence strategy. I imagine the Minister will take the opportunity to address that.

We face today the simultaneous threats of state-on-state conflict and global terrorism. We are facing down those threats with our allies in NATO and elsewhere, such as our friends in the Gulf states. We will continue to need a very large and potent armed forces to do that; mass matters, and it will continue to matter. It will come as no surprise that, as a former soldier, I am and will always be an advocate for a bigger armed forces. In an ideal world, I would like to see not 2% of GDP spent on defence but somewhere nearer 3%. However, we have to live in the real world, and we have to play the pitch we inherited. We are still dealing with the legacy of Labour’s mismanagement of the economy, which left a large black hole at the heart of defence spending.

In my judgment, the 2015 strategic defence and security review did a good job of assessing and responding to the current global threats I described, and combined with the ongoing investment of £178 billion over the next 10 years, it will deliver a raft of impressive new hardware and, more importantly, an agile and highly deployable force. All of that is against the background of significant financial constraints. I am particularly pleased that elements of the new strike brigades formed as a result of that SDSR—including 4 Rifles, 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, 2nd Battalion Princess of Wales Royal Regiment and 2nd Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment—will be based in my constituency. We have two impressive carriers coming online, new submarines and new frigates, as well as a total and unreserved commitment to our continuous at-sea deterrence, Trident.

While we praise all that, we must, as parliamentarians and constituency MPs, always critically assess our own Government’s policies. We must ensure that our procurement is smart and that the carrier group we are investing in can fight. We must ensure that 2% of GDP spent on defence actually means a real 2%, and we must ensure that projects such as the F-35 are completed on time and on budget. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will reassure us on that note today.

We clearly need significant force, but just as important, especially when it comes to dealing with global terrorism, is our approach and attitude towards using that force. I think the primary lesson of the last 15 years of expeditionary counter-insurgency wars is that it is only when we are discreet in the use of force, and when we work to empower and partner with local allies, that we achieve great results in combating terrorism.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. However, I am puzzled by his line of argument. He seems to be saying that expeditionary counter-insurgency warfare is what we expect to do in the years ahead, while at the same time saying we must be flexible. What does he think about the notion that NATO has this entirely wrong, that we are focusing on the last war and that the next war may well be, for example, in the north Atlantic or high Arctic? That is something that the Select Committee on Defence is halfway through studying.

[Leo Docherty]

If my hon. Friend is unsure of the meaning of my remarks, I am saying that mass is important—we absolutely need a very large and potent armed forces—but the lesson of the past 15 years in Iraq and Afghanistan is that we may get counter-productive results if we engage without the politics being right, as he will see from the remainder of my remarks. It is only when we engage and work with allies that results that match our interest and theirs can be achieved.

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, our good intentions were overtaken by the realities of local politics on the ground and an over-optimism about what the British state can achieve politically by the overt use of military force. We must guard against that in future. I learned that lesson as a soldier in southern Iraq more than 10 years ago. I remember one particular day when I visited a police station run by an Iraqi police unit that we were mentoring in al-Amarah in southern Iraq. Despite our working very closely with them, I was alarmed to find, on visiting the interior of the police station, a picture of Muqtada al-Sadr, who was the leader of the Mahdi army—the very insurgent group we were fighting, supposedly with the Iraqi police. That kind of duality and duplicity undermined our capability and the likelihood of us having a positive outcome in Iraq.

I have carried that insight with me over the years, but for many others, including my friend and fellow soldier, Captain Richard Holmes, that duplicity and the central dilemma of our presence in Iraq had lethal consequences. Richard was a classmate of mine at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and went on to be a fine Parachute Regiment officer. He deployed on his second tour of Iraq in the winter of 2005 to mentor the Iraqi police—something he put his heart and soul into. Progress was made thanks to his efforts, but despite his commitment and earnest professionalism, the forces of sectarianism, violence, Shi’ite rivalry and Iranian meddling prevailed. One day, after leaving the very same police station that I had visited the previous winter, his patrol was struck by an IED, and he and his driver, Private Lee Ellis, were instantly killed.

The point I am making is that no matter how good or how dedicated the servicemen or women are, politics—in the middle east, it is often the politics of violence—will always trump good intentions. The lesson at the heart of this is that we must be discreet, and we must work with allies whose interests match ours and who genuinely need our help. That lesson and that approach should shape the way we do business in the future and the way we train and deploy our forces. If we follow that approach, we can achieve great results.

In Iraq, we are now having a very positive impact. Today we have more than 1,200 personnel deployed on Op Shader across Iraq and Syria, co-ordinating Royal Air Force airstrikes, taking the fight to Daesh and, critically, working very closely with Kurdish peshmerga forces, whose interests match ours. That type of involvement —helping our allies to achieve their goals with the bespoke use of expertise and hard power—is a model for the future. We can and should replicate that approach around the globe.

The other primary lesson we have learned from the campaigns in both Iraq and Afghanistan is that the current generation of British forces men and women are equal to the example shown by their forebears across all three services. Young men and women join the armed forces today in order to deploy. We are in their debt, and it is our duty to arm them, equip them and protect them as best we can. Our servicemen and women are this country’s most precious asset, and we must put them at the heart of our defence policy. I welcome the Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill, which will have a very positive impact on the working lives of our armed forces men and women. We should celebrate the fact that they are prepared to take risks. They are not victims, but heirs to a remarkable and magnificent tradition. The recent remarks made by the Chief of the General Staff about service personnel needing empathy rather than sympathy were very welcome and apt.

We must maintain our resolve to deploy whenever and wherever necessary. We must not lose our nerve. On that note, I will conclude my remarks by quoting from a letter sent to me recently by a veteran who, as a young commander, led a team in Afghanistan at the height of the conflict. At one point he survived an IED strike so powerful that it destroyed the armoured fighting vehicle he was commanding. His letter reads:

“In Afghanistan I was scared of many things. I was frightened of the Taleban, I doubted myself, I worried about the availability of helicopter medical support. The one thing I never doubted or questioned was the willingness of the soldiers under my command to fight tooth and nail. No matter how badly they were bleeding, no matter how cold, how hot, how tired or how dehydrated they were, time and again their willingness to take a step forward, put their hand up and say ‘ok then, let’s go’ was extraordinary. 18 year olds who had volunteered to go 5000 miles to protect the Afghan people. These much-maligned members of the ‘PlayStation generation’ were in fact the heirs to boys who stood at Waterloo, sailed at Jutland and flew in the Battle of Britain.”

I quote from that letter because those words so eloquently convey why we are proud to have the finest armed forces in the world, why our servicemen and women will always be our greatest asset and, importantly, why, despite all the financial and fiscal constraints of the current time, we should be confident and assured of our future as a formidable military power.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Leo Docherty]

Thank you very much for your chairmanship today, Sir Roger. I thank the Minister for responding and all colleagues who have taken the time to come and contribute today. The Romans were fond of saying, “If you wish for peace, you must prepare for war”, and I will be conclude by saying that I am confident that this Government and her Ministers will allow our great country to do just that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future shape of the armed forces.