Strategic Defence and Security Review

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his suggestion, but I am not going to be drawn into that. I want to return to his mention of strategy. I am Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, which is conducting an inquiry entitled ““Who does UK grand strategy?”” We have had evidence from the Foreign Secretary and this morning the Chief of the Defence Staff gave evidence. There is a widespread feeling, expressed by the CDS himself, that we have lost the art of strategic thinking. An article in the RUSI Journal by General Paul Newton and others states:"““The problem with the UK 'debate' on strategy, and defence matters more generally, is that for many observers there does not seem to be one.””" I am afraid that that is the vulnerability of this defence review—that it is being conducted in the absence of a coherent strategy. As the CDS said, we have lost the ““habit of strategic thought””—the kind that looks 20 years ahead and asks what sort of country we want to be. The decisions that are made in the SDSR will define what sort of country we are in 10, 15 or 20 years' time. It seems as though we are following Sir Humphrey's adage about producing Government documents: ““Always get rid of the difficult bit in the title—it does less harm than in the text.”” Thus strategy is referred to in the title, and not to be dealt with in the substance of the text. Yes, deficit reduction is the main effort of Government under the present circumstances; nobody in the defence world resents or disputes that. Indeed, economic security is one of the fundamental qualities of a secure state. However, the SDSR should concentrate on maintaining what I call minimum recoverable capability, so that however far we pare down current capabilities, they are recoverable in the event of an emergency. It is a risky business in this world. In the 1930s, we planned for a three-year warning for going to war, yet three years was hardly enough. As was pointed out in evidence to our Committee, it was the fighters—the Hurricanes and the Spitfires—coming into service at just the critical moment that saved this country from annihilation. That is the kind of risk analysis that has to be made in this defence review. If the debate is about what capability we are employing and what capability we do not need because we never use it, that misses the point. Defence is about preparing for what we do not expect or anticipate. It is about being ready to use capabilities that we hope never to use, the strategic deterrent being a case in point. The danger of the SDSR is that it is being cost-driven—that it will permanently relegate this country from the first division of global powers, and that we are losing capabilities that once lost will never be recovered. We nearly did that in 1982. Paradoxically, it was the invasion of the Falklands that saved us and completely changed the situation. In fact, it brought back into being the whole concept of expeditionary warfare, which was a very alien concept in cold war terms. The CDS referred to the financial envelope that the Ministry of Defence has been given. That sends shivers down my spine. The Treasury cannot be allowed to define £500 million spent on defence in terms exactly equivalent to £500 million spent on quangos and bureaucracy. The saving of £500 million on defence will cost far more strategically to this country than that of £500 million on quangos and bureaucracy. That qualitative judgment must be understood. We have talked about Trident, although perhaps, for the sake of brevity, today is not the time to have that debate. If we delay Trident, we are not only doing something extraordinary that the Treasury has decried and despaired about so often in relation to defence, but putting off a programme that will cost more. If we are trying to get the deficit down over a 20-year period, then adding to costs in five years' time will not reduce the deficit. It is like the pension problem whereby we store up future liabilities instead of facing up to them today. It is better to spend the money today than store up a bigger liability later on. We also run the risk of reopening the debate and creating an atmosphere in which cancellation becomes an option, and eventually an inevitability because of the cost increase. If we are going to have a deterrent, then it is not about firing those weapons but about being ready and evidently prepared and determined to do so if necessary. It is about resolve, intent and sending signals to the wider world about what sort of country we are and how determined we are to defend our interests and our allies. If we falter on the upgrade of Trident, we will falter on the intention and resolve to defend our country, our wider interests and our allies. That is why we should not go down that road. The alternative that we face in the defence review is Trident crowding out everything else, because there would be a bulge in expenditure on the procurement budget between 2015 and 2024. We would lose the aircraft carriers, the fast jets, the joint strike fighter, the transport aircrafts or the tanks, and they all have to be included in the mix. The problem is that the relationship between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence has become dysfunctional. The MOD is evidently the most dysfunctional Department in Whitehall and became so under the previous Government. If I were in the Treasury, I would be exasperated at the constant moving of the goalposts, the additional costs, the cost over-runs and the incompetence that we have seen and that the Gray report exposed. The Prime Minister will have to intervene in that dispute between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, to safeguard vital defence capability, despite the MOD's incompetence, and give it a chance to sort matters out. Otherwise, we will finish up abandoning vital capacity, and non-economic strategic considerations will simply be ignored. Perhaps the real SDSR will start after the spending review, because this SDSR has such a short time scale. The real strategic thinking—the installation of capacity for strategic thinking throughout Whitehall—has to start after this SDSR, and then we have to rebuild on the foundations that are left after the spending round. But what this spending round must not do is permanently relegate this country to the second division.