The right hon. Gentleman has got that on the record. I am not going to get into a history lesson about the 10-year rule—I think the history books tell the story—but we have seen what happened from 2010 onwards.
We have had a cut of 40,000 personnel in our armed forces, and it is not just about numbers; it is about experience. Individuals were made compulsorily redundant. If I had made people compulsorily redundant when I was a Defence Minister, The Sun and the right-wing press in this country would have been shouting from the rooftops, but they did absolutely nothing, and we lost experience. One in five of our ships was removed, as were more than 200 aircraft, and the satisfaction rating among our armed forces personnel is now below 50%. We have had a system over the past few years that has wasted money, as we have chronicled in our report, and we actually now have the £30 billion black hole in our equipment budget that was predicted in 2009, as the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), has referred to.
This is not about whether the defence budget is 2%, 3% or 5%. It is about looking at how we have got into this situation, and how we change it—how we face the challenges that confront us today. Whichever party is in government after the next election will have to face those challenges, but we have to get away from British exceptionalism. We have great ambitions to be a global power, like some kind of imperial power. I am sorry, but we are not. We can continue that myth ad infinitum, but unless we link the resource to the ambition, it is not going to work.
For the past few years, we have had the nonsense slogan of “global Britain”—some pre-imperialist view of what we are doing around the world. I am sorry, but it is absolute nonsense. We have to look at what we can do to protect our own defence. The idea that we are going to be a major player in anything that happens in the south-east of the South China sea—that having two offshore patrol vessels based in Singapore is going to deter the Chinese—is nonsense. If anything happens there, frankly, any commitment that we could give is like a gnat on the backside of an elephant compared with what the Americans would be able to do. We have to be realistic about that.
What do we need to do? We need to look at what we must deliver as part of our NATO commitments. We also need to get away from the myth—and it is a myth, in our Army in particular—that we will deliver a force of divisional strength under any NATO commitment. We cannot do it now, we have not been able to do it for quite a few years, and we just need to be realistic about that. We need to sit down with NATO and look at what we can contribute to European defence. Clearly, the nuclear deterrent is a key part of that. However, do we, for example, need a full spectrum Army? No, we do not.
We need to plug into our NATO allies, and ask what we can deliver well as part of the overall defence against the threat coming not only from Russia in Europe, but increasingly from China in the north Atlantic as we get global warming and the opening of sea lanes.
There is an idea that we will be sending aircraft carriers around the world. No, we will not. We need to commit them to NATO, and that means some very tough decisions. It also means that we need a mindset change. We have to be honest with the public about this, and say that we will not be able to do everything. There are then some hard decisions to be taken about the armed forces. For example, we should say to the Army, “We’re not going to be doing that, but we are going to do this very well. We will dovetail that into NATO commitments, and actually make a real difference.” There are big decisions that will have to be taken by any Government, whoever gets in after the next election.
Please let us get away from the myth—and it is a myth—that we will be going around the world and intervening in every single conflict. For example, look at the air strikes on the Houthis in the last few weeks. We have contributed four aircraft because we want to be seen to be alongside the Americans, but I would ask: what is the strategy for doing that? There is no strategy. Okay, we have bombed the Houthis, but is that going to resolve the situation? No, it is not. Does it show that Britain is a global power? No, it does not. Frankly, we do not have the resources, unless someone will say that the defence budget is going to be 3%, 4%, 5%, 6% or 7%, but no Government are going to commit to that.
I say to Conservative Members and the commentariat in our right-wing press that they should just be honest with the British people about what we can do. We can and do have a valuable role to play in NATO and we have willing partners that want to work with us. I am certainly very excited about Sweden and Finland joining, although we need to make sure that we actually get those commitments. As I say, some hard decisions have to be taken and there are some home truths for our armed forces. As the Chair of the PAC said, there are capabilities that we will just have to get out of. We will have to say, “We’re not going to do that, but we’re going to do this and we’re going to do it well, and we are going to contribute,” and that will maximise our influence.
On China, people ask: do we just forget about the South China sea? No, we do not. We use our strong diplomacy, and our great and fantastic abilities with technology and other things in those areas, but it is not about deploying people or equipment out there. Frankly, the sooner we get the reality of such a wake-up call, the better. I will always call, and I have always called, for increased defence expenditure, but I will not do so if it is just to try to plug a vision that will never ever be achieved. We need to make sure that we spend that money well.
That leads on to the point about skills raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar). We need to see any defence expenditure as potential growth in our economy. However, we are not doing that if we are giving contracts to the United States, or to Spain for fleet solid support ships, and not thinking about growing our defence industries here. I accept that there has to be international collaboration, but we must have give and take. The idea that the French would ever give an FSS ship contract to a Spanish shipyard, frankly, is just—