It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.
This is an important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) on securing it. It comes at a very appropriate time, as has been mentioned, because the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and other Government Departments are currently conducting a review of national security capabilities. My first question to the Minister, echoing what others have asked, is about whether he can indicate when that report will be published and what exactly its terms of reference will be. As I understand it, the strategic defence and security review will be, to use the Secretary of State for Defence’s phrase, “refreshed”. Will the Minister confirm that that will dovetail into the review of national security capabilities?
We know that a review is necessary because the Ministry of Defence is facing enormous problems. The SDSR 2015 is built on the premise that there will be sufficient efficiency savings, but as we all know those savings have not been identified. I know that the MOD was hoping for savings in the defence estate, but very little has come from that direction and, of course, there is the deprecation of the pound following the decision on Brexit. In fact, the Royal United Services Institute recently warned that there will be “substantial financial implications” for defence as a result of the weakening pound. In August, RUSI warned that the MOD faces extra costs of up to £700 million a year in the wake of the Brexit vote and the pound’s fall against the dollar. The National Audit Office recently pointed out that there is
“little room for unplanned cost growth”
and has expressed concern about the current defence equipment plan’s vulnerability to foreign exchange rates.
The problem is that approximately £18.6 billion is going to the United States in dollars. Rather than placing an emphasis on developing our own industrial defence capacity—our sovereign capacity—the Government are buying a whole raft of new equipment from the US for the Navy and the RAF: the F-35s, nine P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircrafts and 50 Apache attack helicopters, all from the United States of America.