Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Francois]

On behalf of the whole House, I am delighted to receive my hon. Friend’s positive report. We do believe that we can meet the target. The reserve forces when I served in the 1980s had 75,000 men and women under arms. I have to believe that now, with a larger population, we can get to 30,000 trained, particularly as we start with 19,000 trained now. Put another way, it would require a net increase of only about 20 in each of the 650 parliamentary constituencies in this country across a period of four years. I believe that is eminently achievable and, backed by initiatives such as the corporate covenant to get employers’ support, we are getting on with it. We will deliver this programme.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

14. What steps his Department is taking to support conflict prevention; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

Together with the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence is a full partner in the delivery of the July 2011 building stability overseas strategy, and uses a multi-departmental approach to prioritise UK activity in upstream conflict prevention and stabilising fragile and conflict-affected states around the world in association with partner nations.

In addition, the Ministry of Defence has developed the international defence engagement strategy jointly with the FCO. Published in February 2013, this sets out how the Ministry of Defence can contribute most effectively to the building stability overseas strategy, as well as wider overseas Government objectives.

[Martin Horwood]

I welcome the Ministry of Defence’s involvement in the strategy. Security sector reform is one of its key elements with regard to conflict prevention. How do we ensure that, by building capacity among local security forces, we do not inadvertently enable repression and repressive tactics among those organisations, and that we instead make people feel safer in those countries?

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend will be aware that, when taking training to countries we partner, we put a great deal of effort into instilling what might be called the “moral component” of warfare very directly into what we teach and into what we inculcate in them. That is a very strong part of our overall offer. We can never guarantee that the people we train will not go on to do terrible things, but we can reduce the chances of that happening and make sure that the ethos we are rightly proud of in our own armed forces is exported to others.