Dr Andrew Murrison
MP for South West Wiltshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is good to hear that the Government plan to replenish the dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles in Ukraine, which I suspect it will need this winter. However, Patriot is low volume and high cost. What the Ukrainians need is high volume and low cost.”
“Currently, the Royal Navy has an offshore patrol vessel permanently stationed in the Falkland Islands, but given the threat that is being faced and our need to demonstrate resolve—the sort of thing that, sadly, we did not demonstrate in the early 1980s, which led to miscalculation—will the Minister consider speaking to her MOD colleagues…”
“Since the Foreign Secretary is not going to get the co-operation, fulsome or otherwise, of the Israeli state in differentiating goods and services made in the settlements from those that are assembled, repackaged, produced and grown in Israel itself, how is he going to distinguish the one from the other?”
“The Government insisted on applying the social time preference rate to the disastrous Chagos deal to make an appalling deal look slightly better.”
“Will the First Secretary of State’s exercise in delivering democracy and local accountability and empowering local people include a look at large organisations that cannot be described as governmental or as quangos but that nevertheless exist firmly within the public domain, are established by statute, serve the public and are big employe…”
“I congratulate the Government on the hiring of Alistair Burt—he is a good hire and will do great things for some of these most complex of cases—but does the Minister agree that many of these cases are extremely difficult and exceptionally traumatic, and that it is far better to prevent them happening in the first place?”
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“Ministers have used facts and figures with flair and imagination to suggest, with ever-decreasing conviction, that defence is safe in their hands. For example, there is the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies). We have heard a lot from him already this evening, and I hope that he will not mind if I gently pull his leg a little and revisit his claim last month that in displacement terms, our warship building programme is the most substantial since the great war. In his dreams, apparently, he is trying to out-Dreadnought Jackie Fisher.”
“I know that he was right, because I wore and dealt with some of that kit during Operation Telic II. I am happy to say that matters have improved since then, but we have to admit that it was from a low base. My hon. Friend and I might have to differ ever so slightly on aircraft carriers, but I appreciate the perspective of a cavalry officer and am confident that there will always be a place for the main battle tank, although I fear possibly not for horses. He was right, of course, that we have to fight today’s wars, but it would be imprudent to sign up completely to the Rupert Smith thesis. State-on-state warfare needs resources that cannot simply be turned on and off. If we admit it as a catastrophic possibility, we must prepare for it now.”
“He said that FRES as a brand was now meaningless, with which I certainly agree, and that the Scout vehicle was unlikely to reach main gate in 10 months, as the Minister has suggested. The hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) mentioned cut and sew in connection with the camouflage uniform and put in a bid for Chorley in referring to that contract’s renewal. I assume that that will be favourably entertained, since the Prime Minister wants British jobs for British workers. The hon. Gentleman mounted a defence of the beleaguered A400M and hoped that tranche 3 would go ahead, and he called for a “marinised” Typhoon. His remarks may well be prescient. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) highlighted problems with kit in the early stages of Operation Telic.”
“She talked a great deal about Plymouth, a city that I know very well, and she will have been as distressed as I have by the BBC news from Plymouth, which has led today with the story that the naval base there is to be a “nuclear dustbin”. She was rather pointed with the Minister for the Armed Forces in suggesting that he should get his finger out. I wonder whether that is precisely what he has been doing in relation to the future of Devonport. I suggest ever so gently that digits are sometimes best left in situ. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) spoke magisterially as ever and said that we must reconcile ourselves to the almost irreconcilable—the need to fight today’s wars and to prepare for tomorrow’s.”
“I would have thought that the Liberal Democrats would have hoisted that on board by now and would not continually volunteer it as a unique and rather strange element of their slate of policy proposals, such as they are. The hon. Gentleman wants, in effect, to go into the non-proliferation treaty talks in 2010 with the locker bare. He said that he was an idealist, and today we had evidence of that in spade-loads. Does he really think that our unilateral disarmament would convince other countries to do the same? I suspect probably not. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy), who is not in her place, brought us FRES as the French strawberry. We will never think of FRES in quite the same way again.”
“He spoke specifically about the Typhoon Eurofighter and hoped that there would not be the weakening of support from the Government that he perceives. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie) talked largely about jobs in defence manufacturing. He said that delays were about casting off things into the future and increasing costs, which I did not fully understand. Rather bizarrely, he prayed in aid Denmark as evidence that EU defence is a good thing. I would ever so gently remind him that Denmark is exempted from the European security and defence policy, so perhaps it was not the best example to choose. When the Liberal Democrats are in a hole, they should stop digging. The National Audit Office has made it clear that we cannot delay the decision on Trident.”
“I must first draw the attention of the House to my entry in the register. The last defence procurement debate was on 19 June. Since then, the UK economy has declined further in relation to its peer group, the MOD has continued to fight wars on a peacetime budget, and the Treasury has refined the art of squaring the books by mortgaging the future. Its “spend now, pay later” approach relies on “later” being somebody else’s problem—an expedient that Ministers can be sure will be flagged up from now until election day, and well beyond that. We have had an excellent and authoritative debate, with 13 contributions from Back-Bench Members. The right hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) praised the British aerospace industry; of course, he was right to do so.”
“Will the Minister resist the Euro-zealotry of the Liberal Democrats and welcome the long-overdue repositioning of France away from a creeping EU defence identity towards its natural home, NATO? Will he take the opportunity next week in Strasbourg to discuss with France the delineation of security responsibility between NATO and the EU in accordance with Madeleine Albright’s “three D” doctrine: no duplication, no disengagement from north America and no discrimination against non-EU NATO members—particularly Turkey, given current French antipathy?”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), perhaps slightly unfairly, attacked President Obama. Could we put our own house in order by reforming the common agricultural policy, thereby lowering some of the restrictionist barriers that exist?”
“Will my hon. Friend add to his list Morocco, which has strong and increasing trade links with this country and defence links with Europe and ourselves? In particular, will he congratulate Trowbridge in my constituency and Oujda on being twinned 10 days ago? We look forward to improved cultural exchanges as a result. Morocco is, I think, something of a beacon of hope, so will my hon. Friend add it to his list?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At 2 o’clock this afternoon we learned that the Senior Salaries Review Body was recommending a 2.3 per cent. pay rise for Members of Parliament, yet the Armed Forces Pay Review Body’s report has been sitting with Ministers for weeks without an announcement having been made. It is simply not acceptable for MPs to know their pay award while the men and women serving on the front line do not know theirs. Has a Minister applied to you for leave to come to the House to explain the report and what he plans to do about it?”
“I expect that my hon. Friend will, like me, be distressed by the state of the British pork industry, which provides a good example of where imports have increased dramatically in recent years thanks to the Government’s maladroit handling of differential animal welfare standards. Does he agree that one way around that might be to improve labelling so that people at least have the choice to buy British pork, which is reared to extremely high welfare standards, because at the moment that are unable to do so as they do not know what they are buying?”
“In announcing the business the right hon. and learned Lady suggested that next week’s defence debate might be used as an opportunity to raise the important issue of the reserves review, which is long awaited and much delayed. Will she confirm that the matter is of sufficient importance and involves so many MPs who have reservists as constituents—a great deal of work has been put into this—that it should be the subject of a proper oral statement by the Defence Secretary? Will she also confirm that that should be done as soon as possible, as the review is now completed?”
“Is the Secretary of State aware of the report published recently by the Royal College of Physicians? It suggests that the move towards compliance with the new working week has resulted in a reduction of quality not only in clinical care but in the training of junior doctors. Does he agree? If he does, what is he going to do about it?”
“Does the hon. Lady agree that a graphic demonstration of the failure of Network Rail is the state of much of the infrastructure in and around railway stations for which it is responsible? Train operating companies have done their best in many areas to improve the state of railway stations, but they are often frustrated by Network Rail, particularly when it comes to railway bridges, which often look very shabby indeed set against a smartened-up railway station.”
“In the business statement I missed again any reference to a debate on the aircraft carrier programme. The Leader of the House will remember that in December the delay to that programme was sneaked out by way of written ministerial statement. The grounds for the delay—that the aircraft could not be provided within the timeframe originally envisaged—have been flatly denied by the supplier. Will the Leader of the House ensure that Defence Ministers are apprised of the importance of this matter and that Government time is made available for this issue of vital national significance to be adequately debated in the House?”
“Does the Minister not understand that the best thing for the Government to do is to ensure that their loan guarantee schemes work? They have made a lot of noise about them, but the schemes need to start safeguarding the jobs that are being lost every week in constituencies up and down the land. That is happening in my constituency as well, and the women in my area who come to see me are concerned to explain how, thanks to this Government, their businesses are failing.”
“The right hon. Lady said that the problems facing the pork sector were not all to do with labelling, and that is clearly true. However, does she remember telling Jamie Oliver that misleading labelling was a disgrace, and does she remember undertaking to meet the challenge of remedying that problem? She seems to be backing away from that, and trying to downplay the importance of labelling.”
“Could the right hon. Lady not then apply for an exception for British pork—in the same way that the Spanish have applied for an exception for their tinned asparagus—given the uneven playing field that has been introduced since 1999 because of animal welfare standards? That seems to me to be perfectly reasonable. Why has she not done it?”
“He said that they were harming the Government’s attempts to get people to buy British food, but this Minister’s Government have presided over all this. They have exported our one-time poor animal welfare standards to the continent and have trashed the British pork industry in the process. She may agree with Jamie Oliver that that is a disgrace, but if that is so, it is a disgrace that this Government have presided over.”
“Flip the pack over and if people have good eyesight, they will see that the meat is extremely well travelled. My own favourite is something that its retailer is pleased to call Wiltshire cured bacon. There is a way to cure bacon in the Wiltshire manner. I found it in Mrs. Beeton’s cook book at the weekend, and I suspect that the supermarket in question found it there too. I have no way of telling how true to the Wiltshire curing method that bacon is, but that is irrelevant. The purpose of marketing Wiltshire cured bacon is to suggest to the customer that the product is British and therefore trustworthy. Look at the small print and we see that the product is from elsewhere in the EU. Last month, the Secretary of State stamped his foot and told supermarkets to play fair.”
“Categorically, we are run by the EU on labelling.” He is absolutely right. We find on the front of packs “Sourced in the UK”, yet on the back—in the tiniest font, illegible to many of our constituents, or at least to those who do not have 20:20 vision—we find that the product is grown anywhere but the UK. The commercially obliging badge “Produced in the UK” is admissible under World Trade Organisation rules, EU law and the labelling regulations if the very last stage in the food processing took place here, even if the ingredients on which it is based were largely produced abroad. A picture paints a thousand words. Idyllic rural scenes on packets of meat scream “Made in Britain”. That does not happen by chance, for the supermarket marketing men are well versed in human psychology.”
“The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has visited some pretty dreadful things on farmers these past few years, but as an exercise in sheer stupidity that takes the biscuit. The result has been that we have simply exported cheap, cruel meat production to the continent. Today, we have heard a lot about the misdeeds of supermarkets. I was in a supermarket in my constituency at the weekend. A big banner said, “We only sell British Pork”. Many would think that that included bacon, but the sainted Jamie Oliver has alerted us to the sharp practices of our supermarkets. And lo, what do we find, but that that particular supermarket is peddling a large quantity of Danish bacon? As Jamie told the Health Committee recently: “I think labelling in Great Britain is a disgrace.”
“I declare an interest as a keeper of rare-breed pigs. I have four minutes to cover pigs, pork and bacon. I am very proud indeed of the animal welfare standards in the UK, but the rest of the EU seems to be capitalising on our good nature. Rightly or wrongly, most of our constituents believe that their Government observe and gold-plate EU directives that the rest of the EU pays lip service to. That impression, I am afraid, is borne out by the sad story of the British pig industry. What on earth did the Government think would happen when, in 1999, they changed pig welfare standards unilaterally, without the possibility of any form of import control, so that cheap meat from pigs kept in lousy conditions would flood the UK market and trash indigenous mid to low-end production?”
“The Government’s super-garrison initiative offers them an opportunity to do something about the shameful accommodation that many of our troops have had to put up with for far too long. However, servicemen and women will note that defence is conspicuously absent from the Government’s programme for bringing forward capital expenditure and that defence projects are being delayed or cancelled, and they will draw their own conclusions on where they lie in the Government’s scheme of priorities. Why have Ministers decided not to follow the example of other countries that are including defence projects in their fiscal stimulus packages?”
“When may we debate yesterday’s written ministerial statement on defence planning assumptions? Last month, we had the unedifying spectacle of delays to the carrier programme not being debated properly, or at all, in this House, and the Leader of the House commented favourably on our request that the matter should be brought before the House. I have to say that this is becoming something of a habit with Defence Ministers. Could she encourage her shy and retiring colleagues to come to the House to discuss these matters, which are of vital national importance?”
“Will the Leader of the House clarify the statement that she made in December and again on 13 January that when a debate is on armed forces personnel, the title should be interpreted broadly? She will understand that one can no more debate soldiers, sailors and airmen without debating the kit that they use than one can debate teachers or nurses without debating schools or hospitals. Will she confirm that in future, in debates on armed forces personnel, we can debate the equipment that they use and on which they rely?”
“Perhaps the Minister will now admit that the bumping of the naval programme, with all its defence posture, training, personnel and career implications, had nothing to do with the availability of aircraft, and everything to do with the Government’s desperate financial situation. Apparently, we cannot use the word “carrier”, but suffice it to say that grey, flat-topped things displacing 65,000 tonnes take some bumping—”
“I want to mention some of the issues that they raised. First, it is worth reminding ourselves of the provenance of today’s debate. Before Christmas and on 13 January, the Leader of the House conceded that the subject matter for consideration today should be broad, as is traditional in such debates, subject, of course, to Mr. Speaker’s discretion. Clearly, we can no more discuss armed forces personnel without mentioning equipment than we can discuss doctors and nurses without mentioning hospitals, or teachers without mentioning schools. The Leader of the House understood that full well. In December, our soldiers, sailors and airmen learned from a written statement of the revised in-service date for important bits of military hardware.”
“Given the interest from Labour Members, we should not be too surprised that the Government Whips could not muster more foot soldiers, even if quantity is offset by quality. I thank Ministers for adopting suggestions floated by the Leader of the Opposition’s military covenant commission. Imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, and we welcome some of the familiar good ideas that appear in the service personnel Command Paper—transferable waiting lists are a particular favourite of mine. My right hon. Friend’s commission, which is chaired by Frederick Forsyth and staffed by a wide range of experts, including Simon Weston, has made an important contribution to the debate, as has the service personnel Command Paper. We owe a debt of gratitude to all involved, and the service community has welcomed both papers.”
“I start by declaring my registered interest as an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve. I welcome the opportunity to debate our armed forces today. I pay tribute to the men and women who serve our country so well under the most difficult circumstances. I also pay tribute to our Defence Ministers—I had not realised how hard they work, but the Library informs me that they responded to no less than 4,592 questions in the previous Session. We can debate the quality of some of the answers; nevertheless, that is a lot questions. The breakdown is even more interesting: 2,853 questions were asked by Conservatives and only 605 by the mighty Labour party. Even the Liberal Democrats did better than Labour Members.”
“It seems to me that the occupationally mentally ill will be relatively disadvantaged by the new arrangements, and I am sure that that is not the Minister’s intention.”
“The Defence Analytical Services Agency, in its explanatory notes to the data on which I think the Minister was relying on 12 January, sounds the same cautionary note. I have two requests for the Minister that touch on mental health. First, will he look at the burden of proof and the time limit for claims under the armed forces compensation scheme? Unlike in the war pensions scheme, the burden of proof lies with the claimant, and claims are timed out after five years. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) rightly raised that point earlier. The Minister will understand that mental illness is often far more difficult to relate to a specific insult than physical injury, and that it can manifest itself many years after the provoking incident.”
“I pay tribute to everything that has been done for people with post-traumatic stress disorder, but the Minister’s apparent complacency shocked and surprised me. What did not surprise me so much was the British Medical Association’s briefing note that was circulated in advance of today’s debate, which featured combat stress prominently. The charity, Combat Stress, has rightly pointed out that the Minister’s rebuttal relied on the research programme run by King’s college, London. The work of Professor Wessely is very important, but the Minister should know that it is a long-term population study, and that it does not necessarily reflect the scale of mental distress sustained on intense operations.”
“I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Heaven loves a trier, and I got further than I thought that I might. Given the statement of 11 December, the Minister’s remarks today, and the fact that defence will not feature in the Government’s economic stimulus, the men and women of our armed forces will be awaiting the conclusion of the Gray review and the Ministry of Defence’s current planning round in March with trepidation. I should like to turn to the subject of combat stress. On 12 January, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), said that he was “shocked and surprised” that I had not understood what his Government had been doing for veterans with combat stress.”
“If the Minister would like to come to the Dispatch Box and say that he will waive any out-of-time provision under his new arrangements, I would be very happy to take an intervention from him.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention. He will know that, following the Falklands campaign, the average length of time for people coming forward with combat stress was 13 years, so we will not yet have the examples to which he has referred. However, the burden of proof will remain as it is. I ask him to look at the overarching arrangements again, so that we can perhaps avoid certain unintended consequences. I will leave it at that. [ Interruption. ] The Minister says that he has not had any examples, but I would point him to the evidence from the Falklands and other conflicts, which suggests that combat stress can crop up many years after the provoking insult.”
“What conclusions are the men and women of our armed forces to draw from the fact that some public servants appear to be far more equal than others?”
“I would be delighted if Ministers cracked on with that in pilot form—if they do not, in due course we will. It is recognised that a period of decompression after leaving theatre contributes to good mental health and domestic harmony. The Minister mentioned decompression in Cyprus. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office gives its personnel a full two weeks; what is more, they can fly at taxpayers’ expense to wherever they like for their decompression. Poor old Tommy Atkins gets a lesser deal and has to make do with 24 hours at Dhekelia barracks in Cyprus. I have to tell the Minister that a couple of tinnies, a medal and a pep talk from a general does not pass muster when set against two weeks on a beach in the Caribbean.”
“My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Minister for the Armed Forces did not mention it in his opening remarks, but perhaps the Under-Secretary will do so in his summing up. The Home Office is conducting a study of the prison population with regard to mental illness among veterans, and I very much hope that some of the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire will be dealt with as part of that study. We look forward to its reporting later this year. Secondly on the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder and combat stress, will the Minister consider adopting another idea from the military covenant commission—the piloting of active case finding so that psychological illness attributable to service in the armed forces can be discovered and people can receive the treatment they need in a timely fashion?”
“In fact, they do not always necessarily get the 24 hours. Perhaps the picture is mixed: some get rather longer, some less. The point that I am trying to make is that if we are providing two weeks’ decompression for one group of people and 24 hours for another group, there is clearly a very big difference between them. They probably cannot both be right. It would be good to try to work out what is best practice in relation to decompression. One thing that we can agree on is that decompression is a welcome innovation. It appears particularly to improve domestic harmony among returnees, but we could perhaps look a little more into the question of precisely how it is played out.”
“That point is well made, and I shall deal with the issues surrounding it later in my contribution. It is worth reflecting on the studies that have rightly looked into incidents of domestic violence and general unhappiness among returnees. It appears from that work that decompression is a good thing. I have to say that I would be a little cautious about laying into decompression, but I entirely accept my hon. Friend’s point.”
“In October, he said: “We need to make sure our people get sufficient rest and recuperation in the right place—not on a plane.” I hope that the Minister has been adequately rebriefed by the Chief of the Defence Staff. Perhaps he could tell us what action he proposes to take. I hear him chuckling; perhaps I can take that as an indication that he has indeed been rebriefed.”
“That is a very good point. We could also cite members of the reserve forces, who are traditionally deployed as individuals or small units. I suppose that their position would be similar to that of people deployed by the Department for International Development or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. During the summer, the Minister of State wrote to the Leader of the Opposition in, if I may say so, slightly hubristic terms, saying that our complaint that servicemen were spending part of their leave in departure lounges was wrong. I am sure that the Minister remembers that exchange of correspondence. It appears that the Chief of the Defence Staff understands the problem, even if the Minister does not.”
“In my view, interacting with an e-learning tool is no substitute for interacting with real people. What review has the Minister undertaken of the e-learning tool, which had its first anniversary in September? Have the overwhelming majority of packages been left to gather e-dust? As the Minister suggested, nothing is more important to service families than the education of their children, yet authorities that have to cater for substantial numbers of service children find they are out of pocket because of the cost drivers that they bring. My own authority, Wiltshire, does the best it can to smooth that, but it is a challenge.”
“The suggestion that these laudable public servants and first-rate role models should not be welcomed on to publicly owned and run premises is frankly obscene. It is no good Ministers singing the praises of the troops on the one hand and failing to condemn the prejudices of the left on the other. In that spirit, I hope that the Government will wish to emulate the UK GI Bill unveiled by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) in September, which draws from the troops-to-teachers experience in the States. It addresses two needs, namely the need to facilitate the employment of people leaving the armed forces and the need for positive role models to whom children will relate. The Minister will know that I have in the past decried the disappearance of school visits teams in favour of the e-learning tool Defence Dynamics.”
“Nobody should be in any doubt about the damage that that sort of thing does to the morale of our fighting forces and I sincerely hope that lessons have been learned. I recognise the national recognition study, in so far as it suggests the Government understand the need to inculcate the armed forces into the public imagination. The military covenant commission considered that in some depth and reflected the fact that the most important citizens as far as forming opinions are concerned are those currently at school. I wholeheartedly support the involvement of our armed forces in schools, as the Defence Committee appears to have done in its July 2008 report. I utterly condemn the suggestion by some teachers’ representatives—however veiled—that soldiers in schools are somehow sinister.”
“A further SOFA with Australia was refused by Canberra. We have it on the very best authority that the NATO and US SOFAs are remarkably similar and give better protection to troops, including the 15 UK troops operating as part of the small NATO contingent in Iraq, than the UK SOFA. The message received by our men and women is that their Government are less exercised about them than the US or, indeed, NATO. Ministers must act to ensure that our military does not suffer from the pervasive idea that personnel operating in the most difficult circumstances are backed by the Government only in so far as they provide a politically obliging backdrop. When things get tough, what are our people to think if Ministers’ first instinct is publicly to blame officers in the field, who traditionally cannot answer back?”
“The creation of the post of Director of Service Prosecutions and the appointment of a candidate with no obvious military experience and unknown sympathies did not help to deal with that perception, and I hope the Minister will accept that perception is very important indeed. The Director of Service Prosecutions was hired last year and will assume his full duties in the autumn. We have discussed that delay in Committee, but perhaps the Minister will tell the House why there has been such a delay and what Mr. Houlder has been doing with his time. Hopefully he has been acquainting himself with the Army, Navy and Air Force, and attending to his single service duties. Over Christmas, separate bilateral status of forces agreements were signed by Baghdad and the United States, the United Kingdom and NATO.”
“I think that there is an element of confusion between post-operational tour leave and in-tour rest and recuperation. In that exchange of correspondence, we mostly debated in-tour rest and recuperation, and I think that the Chief of the Defence Staff was referring largely to that in his public remarks. I am sorry if the Chief of the Defence Staff does not speak privately to the Minister about his concerns and prefers to put his comments in the public domain, but he said what he said, and we happen to agree with him. While I absolutely accept that we do not live in an ideal world, overstretch is a reality, and I am afraid that that is a symptom of it. There is a general feeling among members of the armed forces that the Government are not necessarily always on their side. That was picked up by our military covenant commission.”