Nick Harvey MP

DEFENCE IN THE UK

Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD): I want to start by echoing the words of tribute and condolence to those who have lost their lives or been seriously injured since we last debated defence matters in this House in July. In also paying tribute to the Ministers who have left their post, I should like to welcome the two who are with us today. I am glad that manpower shortages and overstretch in the rest of the military family is not going to extend as far as the Government Front Bench.

It will be useful to us to have the two of them here; both have been active participants in defence debates. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) produced a very worthwhile report on the relationships between the armed forces and the wider community. I hope that he will now have the chance to follow through some of the recommendations that he made in that report. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) is a very welcome addition to the Government Front Bench-one that is richly deserved and long overdue. As others have said, he brings with him a long list of past observations, which I hope he will be able to follow through.

I do not know what the new Secretary of State can have thought when the phone call came inviting him to take up his post. Despite the admirable researches that have been reported to us, he has not recently been a participant in these debates. However, I should think by now-six days on-he must have a pretty clear idea of the immensity of the headaches that he has inherited and taken on. I put those as being principally a financial crisis in his Department, a lack of strategic framework-or at any rate, a confused one-for Britain's defence policy, and some decisions desperately needed on big procurement items.

I do not know whether the MOD still bothers denying that it is in a state of financial crisis; if so, it is largely wasting its breath. It is a wide open secret that it faces a very serious financial problem. The budget for the three years of the comprehensive spending review will have to go an awful long way, and various estimates reckon that there is a funding black hole. Some say that it is about £2 billion; others say that it is as much as £5 billion. It is certainly going to be a very difficult 18 months for the ministerial team in trying to make sense out of that situation.

Of course, we have the ongoing demands of two so-called medium-scale operations, in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have urgent operational requirements to meet the immediate needs there. There is also an enormous procurement shopping list looming, including carriers; the future rapid effect system; Astute submarines, the replacement, ultimately, of the Trident system; surface vessels; the joint strike fighter; another tranche of Eurofighters; and a new generation of helicopters. The list goes on and on.

It is clear to all observers that the budgets, as formulated, are not adequate to meet all those requirements; one does not have to be a mathematician of any great strength to realise that things simply do not add up. There is a tension between the immediate needs of our armed forces in theatre and longer-term needs, which must be planned for now if we are to avoid further problems building up in a relatively small number of years' time.

I applaud the work, reported to us by the Minister of State, in getting armoured vehicles out into theatre as quickly as possible. I am not clear exactly where the acquisition of a further 600 vehicles fits in the envisaged framework for the future rapid effect system, and I do not know whether anybody else is either. That matter is raised with me by industrialists and members of the armed forces, and it will be interesting to know how it is reckoned to fit strategically into what is planned.

Equally, we read worrying newspaper reports that the joint strike fighter project is unravelling, and it is a mystery to me where that leaves our aircraft carriers, given that the joint strike fighters were what we were anticipating would fly from them. I do not know whether anyone views the idea of a marine version of Eurofighter as a serious plan B. Such a version would be costly, slow and, judging by the answers given in previous sittings of the Defence Committee, I doubt it is viewed as a realistic alternative.

Some of these issues can be postponed a bit longer, but given that an election may still be 18 months away, the Government will struggle to maintain that it is business as usual and that all these thorny issues can be put off until after one. The alternative is the tried-and-tested formula to which the Ministry of Defence has resorted again and again over the years: salami-slicing. That is the worst of all worlds, because things end up taking far longer than was anticipated, costing far more, and there are far fewer of them and they have less capability than was originally planned. We must avoid continuing a Heath Robinson approach to defence: adding things on and adapting them in a haphazard manner.

The new ministerial team will have to struggle with these thorny issues, and I believe that they will have to do so within some sort of renewed, or at least re-expressed, strategic framework. I have spoken before in this House of the crying need for a new strategic defence review. I accept that it would not be possible to conclude such a review this side of an election-it is debatable whether it would be wise to commence one this side of an election-but at the very least some of the initial groundwork for such a review should be taking place. If it were possible to secure any sort of all-party consensus on the questions that such a review needed to ask, they could be debated. If a consensus could not be arrived at, at the very least we should debate what questions the review needs to ask.

I believe that those questions are: what kind of forces should we build and maintain in the next 20 or 30 years? Are we committed to maintaining premier league forces in all three forces on our own account? What do we want from defence? What part will be played by our allies in NATO, including its European countries, and by the rest of the UN? How will we work together to achieve the aims and objectives that I hope such a strategic defence review would identify?

Mr. Gray: The hon. Gentleman will be relieved to hear that my hon. Friend the shadow Defence Secretary is committed to an incoming Conservative Government's conducting just such a strategic defence review.

Nick Harvey: All parties in this House are probably committed to such a review occurring. I know that a defence of this line has occasionally been pedalled by Conservative Back Benchers, but it is clear that there will have to be a strategic defence review. Whatever the colour of the Government who are formed after the general election, it would be immensely helpful if some of the spadework had been done now to ensure that such a review could crack on quickly straight after an election and not have to go through a period of hiatus before it could begin.

The new Secretary of State was a supporter of the defence industrial strategy in his previous job at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and now more than ever in the light of the complexity of our operations abroad, we have to work with industry and ensure that we have a defence industrial base on which we can rely in times of conflict. We therefore need to breathe new life into the defence industrial strategy and we will have to achieve that within the strategic framework. I welcome the appointment of a director of strategy at the MOD, but it puzzles me that that has come seven years into our operations in Afghanistan and five years into our operations in Iraq. For all that the appointment is overdue, it is welcome, and I hope that it will provide a lead for the preparatory work that I have described.

I am very anxious about the issue of helicopters that is frequently raised in the House. I was alarmed to see some projected figures that were elicited by the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) for the helicopter fleet that the MOD anticipates sustaining every year from now until 2020. If one looks forward five years to 2013, it is expected that 50 per cent. of our already reduced and undersized helicopter fleet will have gone out of service. By 2020, there will have been a 60 per cent. reduction in the number of helicopters, even if the future Lynx programme comes about as anticipated according to the time scale.

We have to do everything we can to ensure that our troops are equipped with an adequate number of helicopters. Almost whatever the outcome of a strategic defence review, and the decisions that it might make about the size and shape of the Army, Air Force and Navy that we will need in the future, we can predict with certainty that we will need helicopters. They are fundamental to our success, not only in current operations, but in the long-term future. The number of helicopters that we can get into theatre is critical, as is their operational effectiveness in hot and high conditions, such as those in Afghanistan. In that country, it is clear that, given the increasing threat from roadside improvised explosive devices, we have to think afresh about the safe movement of our forces as they do their work. I welcome all that has been said about the new protective vehicles, but the quickest and safest way to travel is by air. New helicopters have many capabilities that old ones did not, but however highly equipped they are, they do not come with the ability to be in two places at once. Foremost among all the procurement headaches with which the new ministerial team will have to grapple will be ensuring an adequate number of helicopters in the future.

Battlefield helicopters provide the agility and comparative security that we must have. We need a mix, a balanced force of helicopters, some for large lift operations and some that are small and agile, and can move effectively around operating areas. In summary, we simply need more helicopters.

Mr. Arbuthnot: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman's concerns about the number of helicopters that our armed forces will have in the future, but I am concerned by his remarks about moving everybody around by air. As General Petraeus said last week, in order to persuade the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, we need a presence permanently on the ground, with soldiers from different forces living among the populations they are trying to help to move towards their own governance.

Nick Harvey: The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I am not suggesting abandoning completely movements on the ground or the broader role on the ground that he describes. I welcome the new vehicles that are going out and anticipate that there will probably need to be more in the future, but as part of the overall mix we need more helicopters. We need the best equipped and protected helicopters. We need to ensure that they are of the highest possible standard. We need to meet new crashworthiness requirements and we need a balanced mix. Above all, we need those helicopters quickly. If we look forward to 2013 and 2020, decisions will need to be made very soon if we are not to have a situation in the future that is even worse than the situation now.

The hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) made some points about communications. He was right to touch on some of the difficulties arising from some of the statements that have been reported about the situation in Afghanistan. Attention is increasingly turning to Afghanistan as our role diminishes in Iraq.

As the hon. Gentleman said, in the past week or two we have heard two interesting contributions from very well-placed people, one of whom was the most senior British commander in Afghanistan in recent months, who made the comments as he finished his time there. I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman that the British commander was not really saying anything very new, anything very different or anything particularly shocking. However, the way that his comments have been written up in the media is bound to confuse members of the public, who, regrettably, have not bought into what we are doing in Afghanistan in the way in which I would have liked them to have been. That will not have been assisted in any way by those reports.

Similarly, the British ambassador in Kabul seems to have made some very interesting observations. Whether he had anticipated their being quite so widely circulated, I am not sure, but he has made some interesting observations about the difference between our approach and that of the Americans. In particular, I am thinking of the American actions within Pakistan's border regions, which are clearly causing a great deal of trouble in Pakistan and, probably, a fair few headaches in Afghanistan, too.

Again, the Government have a real challenge on their hands. They must come out and explain afresh what we are doing in Afghanistan and clarify some of the confusions that will have grown up in the public mind. I say that in the knowledge that marines from the west country, including 1,000 or so from Chivenor in my constituency, have gone out to Afghanistan, taking over from the Paras. I worry about what their families understand to be the purpose, the challenge and the state of what we are doing in Afghanistan in the light of the reports that they must be reading in their newspapers. We wish them well, but I believe that the Government need to restate the case for what we are doing out there. I fear that we need to hear what exactly the British view of the new American strategy is. We need to join up defence and reconstruction, as has been said, to ensure that we can create a long-term picture of a viable state able to survive on its own.

The biggest problem for the new ministerial team remains that of overstretch. We could begin to address that if we were to get out of Iraq entirely. The sooner we do that, the sooner the team will be able to make any meaningful headway in tackling overstretch.

Finally, I pay tribute to all those in the armed forces at home and abroad, to those who have come back from their tour of duty and to those who are preparing to go, and to all who train, support and equip them. It is vital that they understand that in this House everybody very much appreciates what they are doing. There is a duty on us all to try to explain to the public what the troops are doing and to ensure that they succeed in these very necessary tasks, which they are carrying out in our national interests.