I thank the Defence Secretary for the advance draft copy of his statement and welcome some elements he announced today that were not in that draft copy, such as the improved childcare package and the rent freeze for armed forces personnel.
Following the Defence Secretary’s decision to stand down, I want to start by paying tribute to his time in this House. He is a political survivor. I remember that his first job in 2010 was as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Ken Clarke, and for the last four years he has been a dedicated Defence Secretary. In particular, I want to recognise his work on Ukraine, and that of the Minister for Armed Forces, the right hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey). His decisions on sending military support to Ukraine, getting other nations to do more and declassifying intelligence have all been beneficial for Ukraine and for Britain.
Today, the Defence Secretary is presenting his plan for the future of the British armed forces at a time when, as he told the House this afternoon, we have
“the return of war to the continent of Europe, alongside growing threats elsewhere in the world”.
As his own future is now short, how long is the shelf-life of his plan? Industry and military leaders cannot be sure that his successor will agree with his decisions, will accept his cuts, will act on his approach; and they cannot be sure how the strategic defence review plan of both his party and mine after the next election will reboot defence planning.
It did not have to be this way. Labour wanted this to be the nation’s defence plan, not the plan of current Conservative Defence Ministers. We offered to work with the Government on a plan to make Britain secure at home and strong abroad. This is not such a plan. It is not a good enough response to war in Europe. It is not enough to accelerate support for Ukraine, to fulfil in
full our NATO obligations, to halt the hollowing out of our forces, and to renew the nation’s moral contract with those who serve and the families who support them.
Why has this defence plan been so delayed? It is 510 days since Putin shattered European security. Since then, 26 other NATO nations have rebooted defence plans and budgets. In the time it has taken the Defence Secretary to produce this long-trailed new defence strategy, Finland has carried out its own review, overturned decades of non-alignment, increased defence spending by 36%, applied to join NATO, and seen its application approved by 30 Parliaments before last week’s NATO summit in Vilnius. That successful NATO summit has made the alliance stronger and support for Ukraine greater. We fully back NATO’s new regional plans and the G7 long-term security commitments to Ukraine, and if UK military aid is accelerated in the coming days, that too will have Labour’s fullest support.
There is a welcome “back to basics” element in this plan—a focus on stockpiles, training, service conditions and more combat-readiness—but it is clear that the plan is driven by costs, not by threats. It is driven by the real cut in day-to-day resource departmental expenditure limits spending that the Defence Secretary agreed in November 2020, and by the failure to secure the £8 billion extra that he said was needed in the spring Budget just to cover inflation. Where is the halt in further cuts in the Army, while NATO plans an eightfold increase in its high readiness forces? Where is the commitment to fulfil in full our NATO obligations? Where is the action plan for military support to Ukraine, first promised by the Defence Secretary in August last year? Where is the programme to reverse record low levels of satisfaction with service life? Where is the full-scale reform of a “broken” defence procurement system for which the Defence Committee called on the very day the Defence Secretary announced that he was stepping down? In fact, it is hard to tell from his announcement today what has changed. The £6.6 billion for defence research and development was promised in the 2021 integrated review, the “global response force” and force level cuts were announced in the Secretary of State’s defence Command Paper 2021, and the “strategic reserve” was recommended by Lord Lancaster in 2021.
As the right hon. Gentleman steps down as the Conservatives’ longest-serving Defence Secretary, will he accept that many of the biggest challenges are being left to the next Defence Secretary, and to the next Government? Finally, as we may not see him again at the Dispatch Box, may I, on behalf of Members in all parts of the House, wish him well in his post-parliamentary career?