This has been a very good debate. We have heard 19 speeches from Members in all parts of the House, although, yet again, no Scottish National party Members have been present for a debate on defence. I congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on making the debate possible, and also on maintaining the role that he has played throughout this Parliament of political pain in the posterior of the Prime Minister.
I particularly want to mention four Members who spoke today: my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard), the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), and the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway). I understand that they will all be retiring at the general election, and I thank them not only for the speeches that they made today, but for their wisdom, and for their contribution to the House during their time here.
Another feature of the debate is that it has been completely void of Whips’ narks, although, in an intervention, the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), who is no longer in the Chamber, produced the usual narrative of the “£38 billion black hole” that the Conservatives claim to have inherited. In a report published in July 2011, the Defence Committee said:
“We note that the MoD now state the genuine size of the gap is substantially in excess of £38 billion. However, we also note the”
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“Secretary of State’s assertion that ‘for the first time in a generation, the MoD will have brought its plans and budget broadly into balance, allowing it to plan with confidence for the delivery of the future equipment programme’. Without proper detailed figures neither statement can be verified.”
The debate has, of course, been dominated by the issue of the 2%. We have seen a great deal of “blue on blue” this afternoon, and I feel sorry for my hon. Friend—as I call him—the Minister. [Interruption.] Yes, he has drawn the short straw. However, he is passionate about defence, and he is very committed to it.
The right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife said that when it came to defence, the Treasury was always the problem. I am sorry, but that is not true in this instance. Last year’s autumn statement set out what the Government, including the Prime Minister, would need to spend between 2016 and 2020, not only to eliminate the deficit but to be in surplus by 2018-19. If, as we heard from the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), there is flat cash over that period, we are talking about a £6.8 billion cut in the defence budget, not counting the other cuts to which the Chancellor referred in the autumn statement.As has been pointed out, health, education and overseas aid have been ring-fenced, so any further cuts made over that period would have to fall on Departments that have not been ring-fenced. That would bring us to a point at which defence spending would be not 2%, but 1.4% of GDP.
However, it is worse than that for defence. The Government’s policy is to ring-fence the equipment budget and increase it by 1%. Any cuts made will not be made to the entire budget; they will fall on 55% of it, which means operations. As we all know, the main cost driver in that area is people, notwithstanding the nonsense that the Prime Minister keeps reiterating—as he did during Prime Minister’s Question Time a few weeks ago in a reply to the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth)—about the Army remaining at its current levels. Unless he has some magic formula to which we mere mortals are not party, I do not understand how he will ensure that that happens.
The Prime Minister now has a defensive strategy. It goes like this: “We try to massage the figures.” However, as the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) has said, that would be dishonest, and he is not alone in saying that. In The Times this morning, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, says he rejects including, for example, the intelligence budget in the figure:
“This is the kind of book-keeping for which you would go to prison if you were running a company.”
So clearly there is a concern. There are people in No. 10 who think if they massage the budget in some way, people will not spot the difference, but it appears from today’s debate that there are many on the Prime Minister’s own Back Benches with a lot of experience of, and commitment to, this sector, and he will find it difficult to pull the wool over their eyes.
I say to those on the Government Benches that I do not for one minute question their commitment to defence, because I know most of them very well, and they have spoken passionately over many years about their commitment to defence. But they have a dilemma, because in a few weeks’ time they will be standing on an election platform calling for a reduction in defence spending; they will have to somehow explain that to their electorate.