Defence Spending

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Grant Shapps

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State clearly has a herculean task to find £75 billion, so let us seek clarity on where it may be found. I welcome the investment if it is in capability. I agree with the shadow Secretary of State on why it was not in the Budget. I think we all know why: it does not stand up to scrutiny. Let me also welcome the Secretary of State’s investment in Ukraine, on the back of the US commitment. I have to say to our US colleagues that it was long overdue. Let me ask some specific questions. It is the duty of Opposition to challenge Government, and we will have our differences.

With no increase in borrowing or debt, the implication is that there will be deeper cuts to other public services. If the Government have assumed a baseline with spend frozen in cash terms as of GDP, as I think was alluded to by the shadow Defence Secretary, it comes nowhere near £75 billion. As I come from a services family, I wonder if the Secretary of State will commit to a direct increase in spend on accommodation, training and recruitment as part of this proposal, given that we are at a near Napoleonic decline on the frontline and have pushed members of the armed forces into food banks and near penury?

The Secretary of State and I will, of course, disagree on the nuclear deterrent, but I wonder if he will answer one specific point while he retains it. The nuclear enterprise has been exposed as unaffordable in the latest report by the National Audit Office. What assurances can he give the House that the nuclear deterrent will not continue to cannibalise the Ministry of Defence budget and, specifically, the £75 billion he has proposed today?

[Grant Shapps]

The first thing I should point out is that page 20 in the annex of the document before the House describes the uplift in the defence budget. We have headlined it as £75 billion. In fact, when we go through and add up the individual amounts year on year, it reaches £77 billion of expenditure. Members can see there exactly how we will get to it.

Secondly, it is fully funded. I know the Labour party does not like the idea, but we will remove 72,000 civil servants from the system, not because we do not think they are good people—fortunately, with low unemployment we know they will be gainfully employed elsewhere—but because we want to get back to the size of the civil service we had before covid, before it expanded greatly. We see no reason to continue to run a civil service with 70,000 additional people each year, when that money could go into the defence of the realm.

The hon. Gentleman asks about our commitment to our armed forces personnel, their families and their accommodation. He may have missed it in my statement, but I mentioned £4 billion that we will now invest in their accommodation and conditions over this period, thanks to this big uplift. He will be aware that last year there were a lot of problems with leaks and boilers not being fixed for considerable periods of time. There have not been those stories this year, because we got on top of that with £400 million and by making sure that contractors are doing their job.

As the hon. Gentleman rightly says, we have our differences on things like nuclear deterrence, but if there is one thing that benefits Scotland in particular, I would suggest it is what goes on at Faslane, with the extraordinary high-quality jobs it produces and the proud part it plays in this nation’s defence.

Situation in the Red Sea

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Grant Shapps

Monday 26th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

First, let me thank the Secretary of State for due sight of his statement. I think that, as an opposition party, we would give it our tentative support. What the shadow Defence Secretary said about possible mission creep does give us concern, but I am sure that it is the role of the Opposition to keep asking those questions.

The Secretary of State knows that my last question regarding this issue was on the position of the People’s Republic of China. Until recently, exports between Europe and China were in excess of £400 billion a year, and there is no doubt that they will suffer as a result of the extended time that it takes to travel between China and Europe, but what beggars belief is China’s utter silence in relation to what is going on—notably, given that it has a military naval capacity in Djibouti.

The Secretary of State and I will disagree on the issue of Gaza. If we had secured a real vote last week, we would probably have seen that recorded formally in the House. Gerald M. Feierstein, the former US diplomat, has said that

“the Houthis’ effort to insert themselves into the Gaza conflict”

is aimed at

“strengthening their support base in the country and cementing their movement more firmly in the… ‘axis of resistance’”.

I wonder whether, like me, the Secretary of State is concerned that we are not only strengthening that axis of resistance but, with illicit Chinese and Russian support, now broadening it in the Red sea.

[Grant Shapps]

I thank the hon. Member for his—as he has described it—tentative support. I have noted that the House has been largely unified on this issue during the past four statements, following previous attacks. He asks about the mission creep situation. I hope he feels reassured by the concept that we have waited longer, in part because the Houthis’ capabilities have been damaged, so that there is a longer gap and we do not see this thing speeding up. We have no intention or desire to see it increase, but we will act if there continue to be attacks on commercial and naval shipping.

The hon. Member asks about China and Russia and I have to say that I agree; it is important that countries that are impacted by this—the entire world, but perhaps China in particular—do speak up. We would welcome China being more vocal about the situation. As I mentioned in my comments, a Chinese vessel has been attacked, so this is of direct concern to the country. I call on China and, of course, Russia—for what it is worth—to be more vocal on these issues.

Lastly, I just do not accept this Gaza-Houthi connection. I remind the House that the Houthis were against Hamas until 2015, and now they arrive on the scene and pretend to support them. They are opportunist thugs taking advantage of the situation and of people’s lives and misery—not just in Gaza but in Yemen—and they should stop and desist immediately.

Ukraine

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Grant Shapps

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising that matter. I am aware of his work in Congress—in fact, I think we were there at roughly the same time last month—and his clear explanations and lobbying of Congress to help release that money to Ukraine. His point is absolutely right: the aid package is in America’s interest not just to come to the rescue of Europe but because other despotic leaders, other autocrats and other regimes of any type will be looking at whether we simply lose and give up because we get bored of the fight and then walk away. They will draw conclusions about that and whether they can always take on the red line of the west and the no-go area if all they have to do is wait it out. This is why my right hon. Friend is right to say that it is indubitably in America’s interest to step in, because otherwise they will find it far more expensive in the future, perhaps in other parts of the world, to defend the world order.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Let me thank the Secretary of State for prior sight of his statement and reiterate the unequivocal support of SNP Members for the defence and, we hope, liberation of the rest of Ukraine in its battle against Vladimir Putin. I know he recognises that part of being an Opposition party is to highlight where we think there may be improvements, and I will highlight supply chain issues, which were alluded to by the shadow Defence Secretary.

Today, Ed Conway of Sky has been highlighting issues around sanction-busting exports from the UK, critically around heavy materials, notably car exports, saying,

“let's imagine you’re a Russian unit needing weapons. Imagine you rely on a certain input or tool from the UK. Back in the past you’d get it directly. But you can’t anymore.”

One solution that Ed alludes to is the setting up of shell companies in friendly Caucasus states, and notably in Kyrgyzstan. He says that since the sanctions, implemented not only by the UK, but other allies, exports from the UK to Kyrgyzstan of the very materials that those frontline Russian troops need have increased by more than 1,100%. Can the Secretary of State advise the House whether he will take that information away, engage with his Cabinet colleagues and write to me or the Defence Committee about how the Government will seek to block off those sanction-busting processes? Will he highlight to those companies that are participating that they are undermining the democratic value of the future Ukrainian nation?

[Grant Shapps]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the support from the SNP, adding to the weight of support from this House for Ukraine, and for raising that issue. I read at length the excellent thread from Ed Conway this morning talking about this issue. It is the case that when sanctions are set up, initially they tend to work, but then, rather like water flowing around a boulder in the stream, people will eventually work their way around and find another route to market. It is important that we continuously look at and assess whether those sanctions are doing the thing we initially intended them to do. As Ed Conway points out in the thread, this is an international problem. He takes the UK as an example, but extends it out and says that it is happening elsewhere, too. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the British Government will be taking a close look at what is happening in reality. This is clearly a Treasury and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office lead, but I undertake to work with them, and I thank him for raising the issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Grant Shapps

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and a very happy new year to you and to the House. The Secretary of State is right to highlight the geopolitical and economic threat from the Houthi-led attacks in the Red sea, as well as the need to participate in Operation Prosperity Guardian, but could he advise the House of how sustainable this and future joint operations will be when increasing numbers of sailors have left the service, and the intake to replace them in the 12 months to March 2023 plunged by 22.1%?

[Grant Shapps]

First, I am confident that we will be able to continue or increase our actions. We complete all our operational requirements at the moment. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is a very tight labour market, but I think that is a subject for celebration in this House: we are seeing such low sustained unemployment, even through some pretty turbulent times. We will redouble our efforts to ensure that all our military services can recruit the people they need.

Middle East: UK Military Deployments

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend will know that we have a number of capabilities for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The Rivet Joint, which he mentioned, has been involved in carrying out missions elsewhere, and—as I think he hinted—has attracted unprofessional behaviour from other air forces. We have the P-8 available as well, along with the Shadow R1 and others. Exactly which aircraft and machinery perform these roles will depend on operational circumstances, but I can confirm that we have not had to pull resources away from other urgent work to provide this cover.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

It is important to repeat the denunciation of the death cult known as Hamas. Given the war of attrition that is now taking place in south Gaza, let me reiterate from the SNP Benches the call for an immediate ceasefire, because I am afraid that a pause will not suffice. The view from here, at least, is that without a ceasefire we will see yet another graveyard from which fundamentalism will rise.

Let me ask a specific question. The Secretary of State mentioned reconnaissance missions looking, rightfully, for UK citizens being held by Hamas. Does he agree that any information coming out of those reconnaissance missions that sees illegal activity under international law should be handed over to the International Criminal Court for its ongoing investigation into the operations in Gaza?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Martin Docherty-Hughes and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Grant Shapps)]

Future energy prices remain highly uncertain and are expected to remain elevated throughout next year. The energy price guarantee from April ’23 is currently expected to equate to £500 of support for households in 2023-24.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

As I hope the Secretary of State will know, recent analysis published by The Herald has shown that the typical dual fuel bill for people in Scotland will be £3,300—£800 more than the current £2,500 price cap. Given the Chancellor’s plans to increase the price cap further, what levels does the Secretary of State expect average energy bills to reach in Scotland next year?

[Grant Shapps]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, a comprehensive range of different support is in place, including the energy price guarantee, which on average looks to guarantee £2,500. It is not specific to each household, of course, and it depends on how much energy is actually used—it is a cap—but there is additional help including the £400 non-repayable support through the energy bills support scheme.