Strength of the UK’s Armed Forces

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP) [V]]

I join the Minister and the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), in paying tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh. I pass on my condolences and those of my party to the royal family, and to those in the armed forces for whom he has undoubtedly been an inspiration, having left behind such a long and distinguished career as a member of the forces. As the Minister rightly says, they will be preparing to give the late Duke of Edinburgh the send-off he rightly deserves, and we wish the armed forces the best in their preparations for that.

Like the shadow Secretary of State, I think it would be normal to decry the fact that the Secretary of State has not responded at the Dispatch Box, but I too entirely understand why he has to be at the NATO meeting on Ukraine. It is worth pausing to reflect on the fact that here we sit, in the north-west corner of Europe, in relative peace, while an ally in the south-east corner of Europe, already annexed and at war, faces a further military build-up on its border. The Scottish National party supports entirely Ukraine’s right to its territorial integrity.

In every defence session we have had—whether Question Time, debates or a statement—all Members across the House have rightly thanked the members of the armed forces who have done so much for us during the pandemic in terms of resilience and, not least in more recent times, the roll-out of the vaccine, which we are all desperate to receive. They have put in some shift, as we would say in Scotland. It is curious that the Government have seen fit to thank the armed forces by telling them that they are going cut up to 10,000 places.

The context here is important, and not just that of the pandemic. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will know—not just as a keen watcher of political events in Scotland, but as a proud Scot yourself—that when it comes to the size of the armed forces, and in particular the things the Government say about them, many promises are made to Scots. That has been the case for quite a few years now, and each and every time, this Conservative Government renege on them. I have mentioned that many times before and I am afraid I am about to do so again.

As the Minister and the Government have confirmed—the Minister reiterated it today—that the cut will go ahead, may I ask the Government to outline to the House, if not today then at some point, and to the people of Scotland, to whom those promises were made, what the impact on the personnel footprint in Scotland will look like? Prior to the independence vote a few years ago, we were promised the permanent stationing of 12,500 Regular troops in Scotland. The Government have never come close to meeting that promise and that target, and it is now obvious that they have no intention of ever trying to, so what will the permanent footprint look like after the cut of up to 10,000 troops is realised?

More broadly on context, it is curious and entirely objectionable as far as I am concerned that the Government would announce such a cut in conventional capability— not just in personnel, but in many of the platforms the shadow Secretary of State mentioned—when they announced their intention to allow an increase in the nuclear weapons stockpile. Now, we could probably have an entire debate on that one issue, but given that this debate is about the armed forces, let me just say this. I am with the Chair of the Defence Committee, whose analysis was spot on. He and I do not agree on the nuclear deterrent and its presence, but he described that increase as an attempt to deflect attention from—indeed, it is a sweetener to allies to cover up for it—the fact that we are having such grave cuts in conventional capability. That is fooling no one.

I plead with the Government to drop the fallacy of trying to play one capability against the other. It is important that we invest in cyber, of course. The new threats that the Minister outlined are real and the Government have our support in trying to meet them, but the shadow Secretary of State was also right: people keep the peace, people deliver resilience, and people put covid jabs into arms—not drones, and certainly not nuclear weapons.

It is curious to see the Government now framing this as though those of us who are against the cuts are somehow old fashioned, and are incapable of assessing modern-day threats and developing an argument on how to meet them. The Minister said earlier that we must not—I think this was the phrase—play “military bingo” when it comes to developing the capabilities needed to meet the threats faced. Well, if it is a game of bingo, like the shadow Secretary of State I would like to read some words from the caller, and the caller is the Prime Minister. During the last election, he said that

“we will not be cutting our armed services in any form.”

During the last general election, he also said:

“We will be maintaining the size of the armed services”.

Why did he say that if he had no intention of delivering? Why did he say it if he knew it would not come to pass? Indeed, the Government have developed that habit when it comes to promises on troop numbers. As I said at the start of my speech, is it not curious that this is how we thank our armed forces after the year they have had, committing themselves to fighting the pandemic?

It is also worth noting that, just after that Defence Command Paper came out, we learned via the media—not via a statement to Parliament or anything we could read in the integrated review paper or its associated documents —that the Office for Veterans’ Affairs is to see a budget cut of up to 40%. It already has a tiny budget—of, I think, around £5 million—and it will be cut. That happened in the same week as the announcement, so why did not one single Minister from a Government who claim to be on the side of veterans come to announce that funding cut to the House? It is also worth noting that that announcement—or the news of the cut, rather, because there was no announcement—came in the same week that the Scottish Government announced that they would spend an extra £1 million on support for veterans who find themselves in Scotland.

The Government should cancel the planned cut in troops, and if that costs more money, so be it. Spend it, invest it. We could come up with a million ways in which the MOD could spend its money better, but I have always said to the Government that when they need more cash from Treasury Ministers and when that is sensible, they would have our support. Indeed, they would have the support of many around the House who do not think that this is a wise way to proceed.

We have talked a lot about how we treat the armed forces, and there is a lot of cross-party agreement on that, but amazingly, we cannot seem to get the Government to act. One thing we should do first is prise from the recruitment process the claws that Capita has sunk in so deeply. It is an expensive mess that does nothing for recruitment. The best people to do recruitment are the members of the armed forces themselves, not the share- holders of Capita, who are growing fat on a failing recruitment system.

Let us have a commission to look at pay and conditions. We know from recent National Audit Office reports that only 45% of serving personnel have any sense of job satisfaction—a staggeringly low figure. We also know that less than half of those living in armed services accommodation are happy with that accommodation. How can it be beyond the wit of the Government or the House to get those two things fixed? We have proposed in the past, and I propose it again today—I am sure you will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Bill on the subject published in the last Parliament by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes)—the introduction of an armed forces representative body that could be placed on a statutory footing and represent the interests of members of the armed forces to the Government when it comes to pay and conditions. At the moment, they have no such body. They rely on Members of Parliament so to do, and with satisfaction figures as low as they are, the answer clearly does not lie in lobbying MPs whom the Government are ignoring.

It is right that we are having a debate on the specific issue of cuts in the number of members of the armed forces and in other conventional capabilities. We will have plenty of time to dive into some of the other issues in the integrated review, I am sure. As I made clear when the Secretary of State came to the House for the publication of the Defence Command Paper, there is much in there that we understand and indeed support, but there are some things that we do not and cannot support. Such egregious cuts to conventional capability, especially service personnel, are something we cannot support.

When the Minister winds up, I wonder whether he would clarify two things. First, as the Government seek to pivot, in addition to their geographic pivot to the Indo-Pacific region, and to place more emphasis on cyber and on drones and other unmanned devices in theatres of conflict, and as they seek to do more to protect not just people, but data, which the Government rightly identify as an attack surface, where will be the proper democratic and human oversight? Where will be the ideas from Government on how we lead efforts internationally to design treaties and rules of engagement when it comes to cyber, the use of unmanned drones and the protection of data? That debate is woefully lacking. In fairness, it is lacking not just here but in the entire western democratic sphere. We have not heard much from the Government about how they will seek to put that right, and I think it is incumbent on them to bring forward a strategy on those things.

Lastly, if you will allow me, Madam Deputy Speaker—this relates more to current events than necessarily to the subject of the debate—might I tease out from the Government a clarification with regard to Ukraine? The Secretary of State is at the meeting of the North Atlantic Council right now, and rightly so. Will the Government clarify whether he intends to give a statement to the House following that meeting, and will he clarify what implications, if any, the current escalation in tensions might have for Operation Orbital, which is ongoing in Ukraine with United Kingdom armed forces?

The Minister said that he was able to look members of the armed forces in the eye and convince them of the merits of cutting jobs and places among them. That is good for him, but he still has a job to do in convincing voters—voters to whom he and his Government made promises, not just in the general election in 2019, but all those years ago ahead of the independence referendum. I am not sure he could look voters in the eye with the same degree of confidence that he came to the House and espoused today. I am afraid this is just one more example of Scotland’s security being ill served by a Government who do not place high regard on their own interests.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We now have a formal time limit of four minutes. I call the Chairman of the Defence Committee, Tobias Ellwood.