Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.”
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government.”
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it.”
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon.”
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries.”
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon.”
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“In the past, there was nothing inevitable about the abolition of slavery, the defeat of fascism, or the facing down of communism, and in the future there is nothing inevitable about the continued spread of democracy and free trade, yet we depend upon democracy, free trade and the international rule of law utterly for our own prosperity and security. We must play our role in the world, simply because we can. That role reflects and reinforces our values and interests. If we wish to step back from our global role, we must be frank about the likely consequences of such a move. We must ask which nation will take our role as America’s most influential and enduring ally. Are we to encourage the US to become unilateralist by disengagement? Who would protect our shipping from Somalian pirates? Who will invest in NATO if we choose to disinvest?”
“Those forces should certainly be part of the review. It is difficult to imagine how we can hang on to a heavily armoured capability, give up those bases and provide for the expense of bases elsewhere. It is an open question. I do not present solutions or capabilities in the paper; I set out parameters for the discussion. As I have said in the House before, for British prosperity and security, the UK’s global role is not a lifestyle choice; it is an imperative. It is not merely an expression of our aspirations. It defines who we are as a nation. We have unique capabilities and advantages that other nations do not possess, and it is in the interests of all free nations, and it is our national responsibility, that we use them for our mutual benefit.”
“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. To reinforce his point, I add that the small wars that we have fought recently have had more characteristics of state-on-state warfare than many people would care to admit. Serbia fought like a state, as did the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein certainly fought like a state twice. The idea that we should give up state-on-state warfare capability is absolute madness.”
“My right hon. Friend is involved in a historic shift of power to this House that is extremely welcome, but will he consider the balance that needs to be struck between accountability and independence? Members of the Back-Bench business committee may be able to act more courageously and independently if they do not feel under threat of defeat at an election.”
“May I commend and support my right hon. Friend’s determination and commitment personally to take responsibility for what our armed forces are seeking to achieve in Afghanistan? Is he aware, however, that there has for a long time been a widespread perception that while we are fighting a war in Afghanistan, Whitehall has not been on the same wartime footing and has not been tackling problems with the urgency that those in our armed services would expect? What is he doing to put Whitehall on a war footing and, in his absence, will he appoint a Secretary of State for Afghanistan to drive things forward?”
“Does my right hon. Friend recall the prayer of St. Augustine, which can be paraphrased as, “Lord make me chaste, but not yet”? In that context, will he explain why it will take three years to establish a business committee, a principle for which I welcome his commendation?”
“Q4. Will the Prime Minister confirm the whole truth about helicopters, as confirmed by parliamentary answers from the Ministry of Defence? That is that he has already cut helicopter numbers from 522 to below 500 over the past 18 months—and under his plans, by 2020 there will be only 303 helicopters in Her Majesty’s armed forces, a cut of 42 per cent.”
“T9. Can the Foreign Secretary confirm that it is his Government’s policy to increase the British contribution to the European Union by billions of pounds and to pay for that by cutting back on the funding of British overseas postings run by his Department? Because that is the net result.”
“Pursuant to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones), what will the arrangements be to report changes in deployments in Helmand, now that the Secretary of State has confirmed that such deployments are in flux and under discussion?”
“Did Lord Adonis inform the permanent secretary as soon as he had been approached by the right hon. Member for North Tyneside, who was representing the interests of National Express? Is not the real problem that we are relying entirely on a Minister’s word that the ministerial code has been complied with? Who enforces the ministerial code? Is it not Ministers themselves and the Prime Minister? Is there not a case for putting the ministerial code for Ministers and former Ministers on to a statutory footing?”
“May I report to the Leader of the House the considerable disquiet in the Defence Committee, on all sides, since the Prime Minister finally admitted that he had cut defence expenditure during wartime? Can she imagine how difficult it is to conduct proper scrutiny through Select Committees when the Government are in constant denial of the truth? Will she arrange time for a debate on the Osmotherly rules, which determine how Ministers field civil servants, chiefs of staff and, indeed, themselves in front of Select Committees—how they conduct themselves? Will she confirm that a new report is being compiled by the Cabinet Office for the civil service and Ministers? Should not that be debated as a vital part of our constitution?”
“I trust the Secretary of State will be in the Chamber when I rise to deliver my remarks, because I will be addressing some of the points he has raised. Can he give a guarantee that defence spending will be ring-fenced for the next four years, because that is what he seems to be promising? If he is not promising that, he should be very clear about it.”
“I join my hon. Friend in welcoming the potential for productive bilateralism with France, alongside our relationship with the United States, but does he agree that we must continue to exercise some caution? We shall not be able to share intelligence with the French as we do with the Americans, and there will be no incentive to share technology with them as there is with the Americans, until France has a long track record as a reliable NATO ally, which will take many years to build—although I very much hope that it will build.”
“Does the hon. Gentleman recall the other part of the story, which is that the Iraqi guests on the British base went to the window to watch the attack?”
“What effect will that have on operational capability, and our global role? Defence could yet be in a far worse position, whoever wins the election. On the basis that the structural deficit must be halved in four years—that is what we have all voted for in this place—while health and overseas aid are ring-fenced budgets, the MOD, along with all other Departments, is in line for a cut of 11 per cent. between 2010 and 2016. According to Professor Chalmers, that will mean a 19 per cent cut in military personnel, to just 142,000, and cuts in ground formations from 97 to 79, in major vessels from 57 to 46, and in available aircraft from 760 to 615.”
“He forecasts that the number of trained military personnel would have to fall by 8.5 per cent. from 175,000 today to 160,000 by 2016, and that ground formations would have to be cut from 97 to 89, major vessels from 57 to 52, and available aircraft from 760 to 700. Those are rough and ready calculations, but in fact capability would probably fall away faster than that. Fighting vehicles, helicopters, other aircraft and ships have been used so intensively on operations in recent years that their serviceable lives will inevitably be shorter. For example, in July 2008 the UK armed forces had 522 helicopters. According to parliamentary answers, the MOD projects that by 2020 there will be only 303—a cut of 42 per cent. That takes account of the 62 Future Lynx and 24 Chinook helicopters recently announced.”
“That is an apt description. The status quo, or trying to muddle along for a few more years on the present basis, will simply not be an option. The crunch is now. The money in the MOD has run out now. An attempt merely to stand still financially will have dramatic consequences in the forthcoming review. The Royal United Services Institute recently published a chilling paper by Professor Malcolm Chalmers, and Doctors Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman of Chatham House have made the same analysis. Chalmers sets out how, even if the defence budget were maintained at present levels in real terms over the lifetime of the next Parliament, and assuming all the natural defence costs such as inflation and 1.5 per cent. annual unit cost growth, there would still have to be dramatic cuts in capability.”
“However big the black hole in next year’s budget, it can always be tided over. In that way, “normal” in the MOD has become more and more divorced from reality. That is what Government and Opposition must face as we plan for the future. The chiefs of staff are telling us that, as we hear about whether we should scrap this or that project, or even whole services, the truth is that the MOD is bust. It cannot balance its books, and its outgoings exceed its income. A larger and larger deficit of one sort or another has been rolled forward and accumulated. The choice is not whether we can maintain the status quo or find some savings and limit our global role for a while. The situation is far more serious. In defence, there is no status quo to defend. I am reminded of Ronald Reagan’s quip that “the status quo is Latin for ‘the mess we are in’”.”
“The recent interventions of the chiefs of staff and former chiefs of staff are profoundly depressing, not because they betray division and dissension within government but because those people all seem to accept that massive cuts are inevitable. Let us thank them for one thing: they are confronting us with the truth, which this Government and the increasingly dysfunctional Ministry of Defence have increasingly been denying for years. I agree with the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney that there are many good people in the MOD, and there have been many good Ministers under this Government, but Ministers, civil servants and even senior serving military officers have become inured to the permanent state of crisis in the Department. The present state—crisis in the MOD—is now regarded as normal.”
“If we are to have a debate about defence in the world, it should be about our global role. The real question that lurks behind the earlier exchanges between Front Benchers is whether we can afford a global role. It is about money: the question is whether we allow this single fiscal crisis to relegate the UK for all time. In one matter we have no choice: rebalancing the public finances and reducing the annual deficit must be the first priority of the next Parliament. The strategic defence and security review, as I prefer to call it, must redefine the UK’s strategic priorities, but in the context of the fiscal crisis that the next Parliament will inherit.”
“One could argue that these people have been politicised because they have felt compelled to pursue a particular “line to take” as opposed to pursuing their own line, and I fully understand the perception of those on the Labour Benches that they have been politicised in the other direction for other reasons. We have to have a rational discussion about this problem, which arises from the subject that I am going to address—the state of the defence budget and the state of the Ministry of Defence—and relates fundamentally to the old story of the quart and the pint pot. All the problems arise because for a considerable period, decisions about the allocation of resources and priorities have been based on trying to produce more effect than we have been prepared to pay for.”
“That is a very considerable challenge, to which I hope that she will have the opportunity to return in the Defence Committee in a future Parliament. I wish to return to the comments of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney about the vexed question of the role of the defence chiefs in the defence debate. They have extraordinary responsibilities, and they are placed in a very difficult position, under politicians who are necessarily political. I have enormous sympathy with what has been said about the need for the Select Committee to be able to operate effectively on the basis that we are being told the truth, and the whole truth. This is an issue that we need to address, but there are no instant solutions, because we do not want to politicise our armed forces; I agree with the hon. Member for Bridgend about that.”
“It is more difficult to make a personal speech in this House, and she made a very personal speech. She brings a thoughtful touch to some of the issues that we face on the Defence Committee. Her remarks about the relationship between conflict and what those involved in conflict suffer, and have to deal with, are very timely just a few days after Combat Stress launched its 90th anniversary appeal. It is worth putting on record the fact that Ministers and Opposition spokesmen seem to be working together very effectively to address some of those issues. With 180,000 personnel having served in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past nine years or so, we can expect as a result some 8,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and 50,000 to 60,000 cases of mental illness involving people who have been exposed to conflict in those two countries.”
“If I may take this liberty, Mr. Deputy Speaker, let me say what a pleasure it is to be called by you once again. You will possibly have a few more stints in the Chair. You are a worthy occupant of that Chair. You stood for Speaker, and you would have been a wonderful Speaker. There was much competition. As you pass out of the world of politics and into the other world, you will be missed by many in this Chamber. It is a pleasure to follow yet another of my colleagues from the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard), who was highly commended by the Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), who is not in his place. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) on her thoughtful, and indeed courageous, speech.”
“You will be pleased to hear, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I will refrain from being drawn into a debate about international development or health. The figures that I gave are illustrative, but the point is that the defence budget is in a terrible mess and there will be renewed pressures on it. I shall come later to what I think should be done to it.”
“I share the hon. Lady’s view, and the Defence Committee heard telling evidence from the director of Abbey Wood that multilateral projects are politically very complicated and tend to run hugely over budget, whereas bilateral projects, perhaps with other countries opting in without having control of the project, are a much better way forward. I am all in favour of bilateral projects with France and the United States, and we cannot afford not to have them wherever it is practical to do so.”
“I think I know what the hon. Gentleman is going to say. It is a matter of record that he never stands up in the Chamber without mentioning the aircraft carriers, but I will indulge him.”
“Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws)—but perhaps he was not in the Chamber when that was said. As I recall, we heard the Liberal Democrat spokesman declare that the first priority was the best defence equipment for our armed forces, then the financial constraints, then the defence industry—so the defence industry comes third.”
“If that fails to drive home the state of crisis in the Ministry of Defence, let us open Bernard Gray’s “Review of Acquisition”, published last year, which says: “The UK’s level of ambition around capability is significantly out-of-balance with resources available on any realistic short-, medium- or long-term basis.” What he means by that, as he has explained in many seminars and talks since, is that if defence spending were to flatline for the next decade, the MOD would be able to afford its existing contracting commitments—and nothing else for the next 10 years. Just think about that: no new orders for defence equipment for a decade. What would happen to our defence industries then? I hear about this hierarchy of requirements that puts defence industries at the bottom of the Liberal Democrats’ priorities: tell that to the hon.”
“I think the hon. Gentleman knows that we are on record as having supported the aircraft carriers for as long as they have been in the programme. I do not want to get too involved in this, but bilateralism is different from integrating budgets. It is integrated budgets that gave us A400Ms, Eurofighters and complicated multinational programmes that inevitably become extremely expensive. Those are not the model for procurement that we want—nor do we want to share technology with other countries that are not prepared to invest in technology. I was talking about the inevitably huge cuts in capabilities—in ships, aircraft, ground formations and so forth—that would follow from flatlining or cutting the defence budget.”
“With savings of perhaps £3 billion in procurement and overheads and a moratorium on discretionary operations, we could maintain a broad spectrum of capabilities and retain the UK’s global role. I believe that that would be outstanding value for money. That is the choice. What we cannot afford to continue to do is to fight wars not just with a peacetime budget, but with a peacetime mentality. Yet, as the papers produced by RUSI and Chatham House show, that is what this Government are guilty of doing. Public spending choices in the next Parliament will be the toughest since the 1930s. We must not repeat the mistakes with defence that our grandfathers made then. Can we afford our global role? The question we should be asking is this: can we afford to lose it?”
“Flexible, deployable capability gives us that indefinable and indispensable quality that a powerful nation needs—it is called “influence” and it takes decades, not years, to create such capabilities, and it would take decades to recreate them if we gave them up just because of a short-term fiscal crisis. How much would it cost to maintain those capabilities? Defence spending in 2008-09 was £36.4 billion, or 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product, including the costs of operations. A phased programme to increase defence spending by up to £7 billion to £10 billion a year, plus inflation over five years, would raise the share of GDP to nearer 3 per cent.—a wholly reasonable peacetime share of national income.”
“The great strength of the Navy is its ability to loiter, perhaps unseen over the horizon, but still exerting a presence nevertheless. We need more drones to track terrorists, to support ground troops and to provide intelligence. Incidentally, the technology brought to bear to protect our armed forces in Afghanistan gives the lie to the idea that a low-tech insurgency can be met by low-tech armed forces in response. Fast jets do not just protect our own airspace but our ground forces, and a surgical strike capability is a massive sub-nuclear tactical deterrent.”
“Which other nation or nations would gain from our retreat? Will they promote freedom and democracy, or will it be something much darker? Free trade, democracy and human rights, and international peace and security are mutually beneficial for all peoples and nations, but sustained diplomacy to promote those values must be underpinned ultimately by the threat of resort to force. The purpose of military capability is not because we intend to fight wars. We cannot afford to fight so many wars as we have in recent years, but we must always remain able to deter them and to be prepared for the unexpected. Military capability is not some theoretical concept. We need the new smaller surface warships, or how can we patrol the many parts of the world where we need to deter aggression or give humanitarian aid?”
“In today’s world, overpopulation, shortage of food, competition for resources, the risk of environmental catastrophe, mass migration, accelerating technological change, nationalism and extremism are all on the rise. These factors are now aggravated by global recession. Is this the moment to substitute hard power for the myth of soft power? Advocates of soft power are those who have decided to rely on a free ride on the hard power of others, including our own. Can we, too, risk opting out of our global role? Which nation would usurp our role as America’s most influential and enduring ally? Are we to encourage the US to become unilateralist? Who would protect our shipping from the Somalian pirates? Who will win the friendship of the oil-rich Gulf states if we abandon them? Who will invest in NATO if we disinvest?”
“How would Europe or India or the US have turned out today without Britain’s global role in the past? In the past, there was nothing inevitable about the abolition of slavery or the defeat of fascism or the facing down of communism, and in the future there is nothing inevitable about the continuing spread of democracy and free trade—yet we depend upon democracy and free trade utterly for our own prosperity and security. We must play our role in the world simply because we can—unlike almost every other nation. That role reflects our values and our interests. I pay tribute to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire). How can we play our role in conflict prevention unless we have the means to do so?”
“There is the answer to the Secretary of State and his challenge earlier, but what do we mean by maintaining a “global role”? Yes, the UK is a member of the UN, NATO, the EU, the G8, the G20 and the Commonwealth, but Germany, Italy, France and Spain do much of what we do in the diplomatic sphere, so why must we accept the expense of our particular global role? For British prosperity and security, the UK’s global role is not a lifestyle choice; it is an imperative. It is not merely an expression of our values, but it defines who we are as a nation. Our geographical and historical inheritance has granted us unique capabilities and advantages that few other nations have, and it is in the interests of all free nations as well as our own that we use them for our and their benefit.”
“A strategic, diplomatic and economic asset will be destroyed unless we address the shortcomings of the defence budget. The debate between the defence chiefs about what to cut misses the point. The big choices facing us are what should be our global role for the next decade and beyond, and what are the potential costs and benefits of that role. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary told RUSI last week: “We”— the Conservatives— “have not waited thirteen years to return to office simply to oversee the management of Britain’s decline”. I suspect that the Secretary of State, whom I welcome back to his place on the Front Bench, rather shares that view. I am sure that he did not take on his job to oversee the management of Britain’s decline.”
“No, the hon. Gentleman will have his chance when he concludes the debate later. The point is that our defence industries are a huge strategic asset. Defence research and development has already been cut by 22 per cent. between 2002 and 2008. As a former Defence Minister, Lord Salisbury, has remarked, we are eating the seedcorn of the industry’s future. The defence industry—including in Liberal Democrat seats such as Yeovil—currently employs 300,000 people. It exports between £4 billion and £10 billion each year, and we still lead the world in key technologies. The UK is the second largest defence exporter—second only to the US—with around 20 per cent. of global defence exports, but we will soon be overtaken by others, even the Chinese, if we contemplate continuing cuts in research and development.”
“As it seems that the chiefs of staff went to the Defence Committee and, in their answers, presented the Government’s view and line but that when they left the military they said something different, who was politicising the armed forces?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for his kind remarks. May I ask him how that global role will be defined? He says that it is something to be decided in the defence review, but does it not go way beyond the MOD’s remit? How will the Government institutionally address that question, and how would he advise the next Government to do so?”
“To that extent, it has made it easier for the Government to get some of their business through as it means that they do not have to keep people here on Thursdays. In my rather naive way, this seems to me to be a very good example of where we could give all right hon. and hon. Members an opportunity to vote on these extremely important motions. It is understandable that this sort of House business comes up on a Thursday, but why was Standing Order No. 41A suspended? I would be grateful if the Leader of the House gave her view. I rather look forward to a House business committee being able to decide when there should and should not be deferred Divisions as that would be an improvement on the present situation, in which the responsibility rests on her shoulders.”
“I agree with everything that has been said, most particularly the point that this underlines the need for a House business committee to take control of these events and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) said before leaving the Chamber, the issue of control of Standing Orders needs to be addressed. I shall be brief, but I wish to ask about the reference in the motion to the suspension of Standing Order No. 41A. How does the Leader of the House decide which Divisions should be taken on the day and which should be deferred? My understanding is that deferred Divisions were introduced to make it easier for large numbers of right hon. and hon. Members to participate in Divisions.”
“All the advice that I have taken from the Clerks suggests that, because the Procedure Committee itself will be elected, it is something of a lacuna in the report that its Chairman will not be. I hope that my Front Benchers will support that amendment.”
“The hon. Gentleman seems to be proposing an alternative nuclear deterrent to Trident—what is it? Is it an existing system or would it have to be designed and created, how much would it cost, and what would be the timing of its introduction?”
“Where are our alliances, particularly NATO, which the Government claim is still the cornerstone of our security? It is remarkable that the advanced research and assessment group at Shrivenham put the danger of a global financial collapse into the draft national security strategy, but were told to take it out, presumably for political reasons, before it occurred.”
“The Foreign Office’s latest strategic assessment is surprisingly old—its new strategic framework of January 2008. It has three elements: “i) Providing a flexible global network serving the Government as a whole. ii) Delivering essential services to the British public and business. iii) Shaping and delivering HMG’s foreign policy.” The Government’s foreign policy is defined in four ways—countering terrorism; reducing and preventing conflict, which are both defensive; promoting a low-carbon, high-growth economy, which is so vague as to be almost meaningless in terms of the activity that it envisages; and developing international institutions, especially the UN and the EU. Yes, that internationalism again. That is not strategy. It is process. Where is trade? Where is energy security?”
“Before the end of the cold war, the UK’s foreign and defence policy objectives had been broadly the same for five centuries: to maintain the balance of power in Europe leaving us free to develop our interests as a global trading power. In the post-cold war world, what is the modern equivalent of that as the basis for defence policy? Throughout history, we have relied on extraordinary people in extraordinary times to frame UK strategy—men such as the elder and younger Pitt, Wellington, First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher and Winston Churchill. The end of the cold war may not have been the end of history, but it may have been the end of Europe as the principal theatre of global affairs. We have failed to develop a new grand strategy to engage with the new reality, where the stage is no longer one continent, but is the whole world.”
“Why did we condemn the illegal election victory of Mr. Ahmadinejad, yet send the British ambassador to attend his inauguration? Labour’s foreign policy has ended up compromising values and interests, and our defence as well. Messianic rhetoric has ended in debilitating drift. Domestic policy has been characterised by waste, and we face an economic situation that leads us once again to question whether we can afford our global role. If we are to end defence and foreign policy drift, we must ask the real question: who holds the UK’s strategic concept? Where is it written down? Who will redraft it before we embark on the defence review, if we are to make it a success?”
“Would it not have been better for Tony Blair to have worried less about a second resolution on Iraq and more about the challenge of post-invasion planning? What does this mean for defence? The doctrine of internationalism cannot any longer govern our defence policy. It leads to the very incoherence in foreign policy and in military action that we saw played out on the streets of Basra. Why did we stake our reputation on supporting the war in Iraq, but lack the political will to follow through in Basra to prevent the city from falling into the hands of the militias? Why did we intervene in Helmand with far too few troops? Four years later, we have ended up with 9,500 troops on a tiny part of the footprint that we originally went in with, and with only the beginnings of a workable strategy.”