Strategic Defence and Security Review

If only the former United States Defence Secretary had possessed the clarity of speech that has just been demonstrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), he might have been better understood. I, too, thank the Backbench Business Committee. Last week's excellent debate on Afghanistan, the ripples of which are, I believe, hitting the shores of Government, showed that it can have an effect. This rather modest reform of our Parliament is clearly for the better, both improving the quality of the voice with which we represent our constituents and demonstrating that we are a revitalised House. That is important in the context of today's debate, because it is surely our democracy that we are discussing. I refer not just to the oft-repeated fact that the first duty of any Government and Parliament is to defend the interests of our democracy, the people who put us here, our political institutions and our allies, but to democracy as a wider entity. It is worth pointing out, even if we were to wish it otherwise, that we are still the second largest contributor to the effort globally, and while our contribution may be considerably less than that of the United States in Afghanistan, it is still more than 10 times that of Germany and France, welcome though their contribution is. I was going to present a short critique of the actions of the last Government, but owing to your injunctions, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall cut that out. In any event, I think that, given that only one Labour Back Bencher is present, it would be grossly unfair to vent my spleen on him. The one person whom I would exempt from criticism is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench. It was plain to many people—those of us who were not in the House at the time could observe it on television from an amateur perspective—that the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) was one of the few people who wrestled with the very difficult circumstances in which he found himself, if I may put it in that way, in the interests of our forces and our service men. What I will say is that, like much of the promise of the last Labour Government, this promise started out very well indeed. The 1998 strategic defence review and the 2005 defence industrial strategy were both extremely fine documents. They were not only coherent and well thought out, but founded on the firm basis of a sense of foreign policy direction and wider British interests. They were also surprisingly prescient. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware of the following phrase in the 1998 strategic defence review. It states that while the review's authors understand that we have to address wider strategic interests, it is also important that there is an understanding that"““smaller but frequent, often simultaneous and sometimes prolonged operations can be more difficult than preparing for a single worst-case conflict.””" If the foresight of Lord Robertson at that time had been fulfilled by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), we might be having a different discussion here today. I believe that future historians, whom the right hon. Gentleman often prays in aid when he is assailed by the judgments of the current generation, will surely judge his failure to articulate a sensible and clear policy on Iraq and Afghanistan—and his predecessor's, too—and his complete failure to fund appropriately our forces in theatre to be a case of terrible neglect. The right hon. Gentleman and his predecessor did precious little to advance the cause of, and case for, peace in the middle east, despite all the assurances we were given at the inception of the Iraq war. Effectively, that failure charges a levy on our intelligence, security and defence budgets for every single year that we fail to find a solution. That is the framework within which the current SDSR must be undertaken. A cautionary tale must also be heeded. It is to be hoped that any differences that might exist between the Treasury and the MOD—I am sure there is complete amity between them!—are settled, and settled for the next 10 years, as is my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's intention. The division between those two Departments has been alluded to frequently in the debate, and it causes a structural problem in our defence capability that has manifested itself very clearly in previous years. I am also pleased that in the formulation of the context of this SDSR there seem to be signs that the Gordian knot that lies at the heart of any defence review is being grasped, in that while my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State states what I hope is the obvious point that we should keep our options open for a future in which we expect our highest priorities to change over time, there is also a recognition that the UK cannot ensure against every imaginable risk and that therefore the Government must decide which risks they are prepared to take. These two statements go to the nub of what we must address in the SDSR. It offers a good and appropriate opportunity to think very clearly about what threats we will face in the distant future, rather than just next year, the year after that and in five years' time, which are much more apparent. I hope it is not too provocative a statement to say that we need to take far greater risks with short-term threats that are unlikely to materialise in order to protect ourselves against longer term risks of which we are far less sure. Let me quickly mention a few key issues that I do not think have been mentioned so far: the competition for water resources; the continued reliance, at least over the next 40 or 50 years, on liquid hydrocarbons; and the shift in global economic power to China and India. All of those issues suggest that we need to be looking to have a stronger maritime force, which requires investment decisions now, not in five, 10 or 15 years' time. Let me also briefly address the question of how we pay for that. It seems ludicrous that we are preserving a deep strike force against an enemy that is unlikely to exist in the very near future—for instance, battle tanks that within their lifetime are unlikely to face an enemy that will come over the European plain. I also echo the points about reservists; their greater use seems to be an obvious way to bring down costs and maintain capability. I also hope the Secretary of State will take on board very clearly the message about Afghanistan that came out of the previous Backbench Business Committee debate. In respect of that country, comments have been made about the 13th century. With the passing knowledge of mediaeval history that I have—and I know one other Member in the Chamber also has—I can say that I think many people in the 13th century would have taken some offence had they heard that comment. The fact is that we cannot generate five centuries or fifteen centuries of development in civil society in five years. We must think very carefully about why we are in Afghanistan. Once that question is answered, the savings might be put towards the serious threats that we will face not in five years' time, but in 20 years' time.