Defence Spending and Readiness

Debate between Lincoln Jopp and Iain Duncan Smith

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), who was speaking a great deal of sense? He mentioned the threat that we face in the High North. He might be interested to know that the Defence Committee was in Norway last week. We went up to the Arctic circle, to the Combined Air Operations Centre at Bodø, where we were told an extraordinary story. When the forces there were doing a security exercise, they put a baddie on the roof of a sangar near the air base’s gate, and took a dog round to find the baddie. The dog did not want to know about the bloke they had put on the roof of the sangar; he would not stop indicating an issue with the sangar itself. He kept on indicating, “There’s something there.” They thought, “Oh blimey, we’d better go and get the keys.” They got the keys and found a Chinese spy, who had been in there for a week. He was arrested and is doing time in prison in Norway—pre-trial, I believe, on remand. That brings home exactly what the hon. Member said: we are talking about real threats and real enemies, and in that case, they were are literally at the gate.

I joined the Army in 1986, and it generously paid for me to go to university to study theology and philosophy—that was very broad-minded of it at the time. I went back to Sandhurst to confirm my commission in 1989. That was a significant moment. I was on college guard, polishing my boots, as I watched the Berlin wall fall. I did not really understand that the geopolitical glue that had helped keep the world safe for the last 40 years was coming unstuck, or what the implications might be for Officer Cadet Jopp, but the implications were certainly there. Those bonds, which had kept the cold war in stasis, did indeed start to melt, and that meant that I had a very busy military career.

I went to war when the Conservatives were in power, and when Labour was in power. I have had poor equipment. Both sides of the House have been responsible for part of what happened following 1989, as we started to manage decline. Do not get me wrong: I am so proud of the men and women of our armed forces, particularly those I led. I buried men from my regiment, and I try not to forget to always pay tribute to them and what they did; it enabled me to stand here and be their voice today. Essentially, from the end of the cold war, successive Governments started to take risks. This ticking time bomb has been passed on from Government to Government. Bad luck, Labour: it has gone off on this Government’s watch; that is the fact of it. Essentially, a very big lie has been told to the British public; they have been told that we can have the defence we want at the price that we are prepared to pay for it.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he recall that at the end of the cold war a paper was written by Francis Fukuyama called “The End of History?”? Does he agree that on the basis of that, everybody believed somehow that no longer would there be war, no longer would there be pressure and no longer would we need armed forces? That was such a mistake, as has been documented, which has affected everything since.

[Lincoln Jopp]

My right hon. Friend and fellow Scots Guardsman makes a good point. The zeitgeist throughout that period of time was to say, “Look, wars are a thing of the past. We can take risk against defence.” That risk has rarely crystallised, so people have been tempted to take more and more risk.

We have also seen it in the hypothecation of defence spending. I get an Army pension, which contributes to the 2% of GDP being spent on defence. The last time I checked—despite the Minister for the Armed Forces having threatened to mobilise me more than once—my pension was not making a huge contribution to our ability to face down a resurgent Russia.

Everyone was taking risk and passing on that risk to one another. Now, I am afraid, that risk has crystallised in that we do face real enemies, and those enemies are very close. We do have to rearm—I should declare an interest as a founder of the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament—but unfortunately our record on that is not great. The numbers were run the other day and of the 32 NATO members recorded we came 31st for rearmament. The only trouble is, in 32nd is Iceland, which does not have any armed forces. That is not a great record for going over to Europe and trying to convince our European and NATO allies that we are pulling our weight.

One or two other things happened in that period of time. First, the MOD got pretty bloated, in particular in procurement. It is deeply unhelpful that we are now on our third Procurement Minister in less than 22 months, which makes it look like we are not taking it seriously. Equally, it shows no consistency in the building of approach. When the Government came in, they appointed the national armaments director, who will be the second-highest paid civil servant in the country. I hope that he is a massive success. I tried to set up the national armaments director up for success before his appointment by asking two Procurement Ministers whether the director would be given carte blanche to tear up the book when it comes to procurement. One of them said not only would he be given the ability to tear up the book but that they would hold him to account for doing so. I said, “The last thing anyone on the Defence Committee wants is for the national armaments director to come in front of us, after being in post a year, to say, ‘Well, we did want to change things, but I wasn’t really allowed to.’” The way is set fair: the national armaments director can rip up that book.

When the Defence Committee went to Ukraine last year, we were briefed on its procurement structure, which is extraordinary. Ukraine has put together an Amazon-like marketplace with 1,700 sovereign Ukrainian defence companies as suppliers and the customers being the fighting brigades, who simply write a requirement for a new bit of kit. For example, let us say that the Russians have got a new screen so the brigades cannot fly their fibre optically guided munition right into the Russians’ command post and have it blow up on the general’s desk. The brigade simply writes up that requirement, saying “I need a pre-charge of some sort to burst through that screen so I can fly my fibre optic guided missile in and get the baddies.” That gets put out to industry, which churns the problem; the record, from flash to bang—from requirement to kit delivery—is five days. That is what can be achieved.

Hon. Members must look at what is being bypassed to achieve that level of agility: the whole of the military chain of command above brigade level, bypassed; the Ministry of Defence, bypassed; the Treasury, bypassed; and equally, all the regulators, bypassed. That should give the national armaments director a sense of where we have to go to generate the relevance.

I think I heard the Armed Forces Minister—I cannot remember whether it was the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns) or the current one—say the other day that it is rather tricky buying drones, because as soon as we have them they go out of date, so we will not buy any. That is pretty defeatist. We should redo the way in which we are thinking about things so that our land forces in Estonia have drones.

Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy

Debate between Lincoln Jopp and Iain Duncan Smith

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I hope I can give my right hon. Friend time to get to the Benches behind him, as he may wish to intervene on me. I am sure that he will not be noticed in that movement, swift and ghost-like as he.

I am not going to stretch this out any longer. The individual I will refer to today worked alongside British forces in Afghanistan, providing operational and intelligence support under direct threat from the Taliban. His family and his home were threatened. He served in the national security directorate in Kabul. His work involved sharing critical intelligence with the British special forces and intelligence services in Kabul and, of course, in the wider region. That intelligence undoubtedly saved lives and contributed to the success of key operations. His contributions are simply not in doubt or in question; they are evidenced extensively, including in a powerful testimony from the most senior commander of British forces in Kabul at the time, who is now a general. He personally worked with this individual and has testified to the crucial role he played.

I am not going to name the general at this point, but he says in his letter in support of this individual’s application:

“His daily security briefings covered possible threats and intelligence reports. These reports made a substantive and crucially life-saving contribution not only to the UK’s military and national security objectives with respect to operations in Afghanistan, but also to the day-to-day safety of British troops and civilian British Embassy staff”

and others. He also says that by the very nature of the daily intelligence that this individual was required to share within this high-level forum, the threat to his life and that of his family was unquestionably at an elevated risk from targeted attacks, including a high risk of death or serious injury by the Taliban regime. I would have thought that that alone was powerful enough evidence to say that this individual should be here now, as he is currently in fear for his life in another country nearby.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I did serve in Afghanistan, including with the young major who is now the general that my right hon. and gallant Friend is referring to. He is an outstanding officer with unimpeachable credentials.

My right hon. and gallant Friend is making a compelling moral case. I have seen at first hand the risks that those Afghans who supported us on operations faced alongside us, which only increased exponentially when the Taliban took over. We have a very moral case for doing whatever we have to do to fulfil our obligation, and if that means tearing up someone’s bureaucratic rulebook, so be it.