Sir Julian Lewis
MP for New Forest East · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I will share with the House one particular case that is representative of many. My constituent, Mrs Gillian Pothecary, lost her husband almost a year ago. She wrote to me in July about her valiant but so far unavailing quest to obtain a civil service widow’s pension.”
“She said: “Mrs Pothecary’s…case falls under the commitment to be fully resolved by early September at the absolute latest. Capita has assured me that her case is on their escalation log and has been flagged for priority handling.” I rang up Gill just before coming into this debate and—you’ve guessed it, Dame Siobhain—she has not yet recei…”
“As the Minister seems to have run out of supportive Back Benchers, I shall endeavour to ask him a helpful and easy question. Accepting that it will be some years, to put it mildly, before we can eliminate our dependency on oil and gas, does he accept in principle that we are more secure if we exploit our own domestic oil and gas resources…”
“I warmly endorse almost everything the Secretary of State has said today, and I genuinely congratulate him on his appointment. In my first speech in this House almost 30 years ago, I promised to support Labour Governments as long as they supported the nuclear deterrent, the conventional armed forces and NATO.”
“On Monday, just as campaigners from the New Forest and Waterside were handing into Downing Street a 32,000-signature petition against the appalling and unfair outcome of local government reorganisation affecting our area, the welcome announcement was made by the Government that the local government reform proposals for Hampshire and three…”
“We are now in a situation that is worse than that at the height of the cold war, so the comparison we have to make is between what we are spending now and what we spent during the cold war, which was, in modern calculating methods, between 4.5% and 5.1% on defence. So let us not talk about increases to 2.7%.”
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“On a point of clarification, let us suppose that someone had come from abroad and been in genuine employment, and had paid some contributions towards social security, but then lost his job through no fault of his own. Does my hon. Friend agree that that person ought to have some entitlement to appropriate levels of benefit?”
“It is unusual for my hon. Friend to reach this stage in the presentation of any of his multifarious Bills without making some reference in depth to the European Union. Will he explain what measures other European Union countries take when people overstay or enter illegally?”
“To give my hon. Friend a moment to relocate his script, may I ask him whether we are perhaps in danger of being unfair to the Government? Could not the reason our Government are so keen to suggest that we sign up to this nonsense, garbage and propaganda be that they want to impress on the House and the British people how important it is to have an in/out referendum on our membership of the European Union?”
“May I express my personal sadness at the loss of Paul Goggins, with whom I worked closely on the Intelligence and Security Committee over the past three years? He was a patriotic humanitarian who reflected the greatest credit on the Labour party and on Parliament. May we have a statement from a Defence Minister on the slow progress of the sale of the freehold of Marchwood military port in my constituency for not very much money and possibly to a company, Associated British Ports, that poses a threat to the New Forest with its burgeoning plans to build a container port on the edge of that precious area?”
“Does my right hon. Friend have any idea whether the Deputy Prime Minister has adopted a new year’s resolution to stop blocking the eminently sensible proposal of his own former party leader, Lord Steel, for modest but necessary House of Lords reform?”
“Can anything be done to rectify a perceived imbalance in criminal cases where the person on trial has direct access to the barrister who is representing him while the victim, as a witness, has no direct access to the prosecutor? Victims sometimes feel that their case is not as fully understood by the prosecutor as it should be. Can anything be done about that?”
“A common defence policy for Europe would clearly undermine the crucial link between Europe and America that forms the basis of NATO. What assessment have our Government made of the number of our fellow EU member states that favour a common defence policy, and of their motivation for favouring such a dangerous step?”
“Finally, may I give the House a personal assurance that, notwithstanding the context of trying to bring Libya back within the comity of nations, there are members of the ISC—one third of whom are senior Labour Members—who, far from endorsing any whitewash, would take a great deal of convincing that it was ever reasonable, proportionate or justifiable to supply people to Colonel Gaddafi’s regime?”
“May I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) that the agencies do not have the power to withhold sensitive material from the ISC, of which I am a member? If they wish to do so, they have to appeal directly to the Prime Minister. In every other respect, they have to give us what we want to see. May I also remind the House that the ISC has been keen to get to grips with this matter, and that it actually started its own investigation, which had to be stayed when the Gibson inquiry was set up?”
“On a day when the newspapers are full of reports of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s concern that the armed forces are being hollowed out, does the hon. Lady understand why some of us feel that such a costly project betrays a warped sense of priorities? In particular, has her Committee devoted any attention to the fact that even in the short time that the project has been in the public domain the estimated cost has increased from about £30 billion to about £50 billion? What concept does she have of our being able to stick even to that higher figure?”
“My hon. Friend’s very life is a statement of fashion. On his point about where power has gone, this year’s Session must be the first time that Parliament has stopped a war on which the Executive were hellbent.”
“I welcome the update to Parliament on the United Kingdom’s future nuclear deterrent published today, which states: “The Government policy remains to maintain a continuous at sea deterrent and proceed with the programme to build a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines.” Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government will in no way entertain any squalid deals with any other party if what is needed for continuous-at-sea deterrence is four submarines and if another party, conceivably the Liberal Democrats, tried to argue that three would do?”
“Have the Government had any opportunity to make an assessment of what measures the Russians may have brought into play to pressurise the Ukrainian Government to change their approach to this important matter?”
“This is a sensible decision, but one of the perennial problems with defence procurement under successive Governments has always been the way in which specifications for what is to be procured are changed by Ministers and especially by the military along the journey. Will the new model be any more capable of coping with that perennial problem than any of the previous iterations?”
“On a point of order, Mr Turner, can you clarify, for the benefit of those of us who might like to intervene on the Minister later, how long the debate has to run?”
“The Minister is being extraordinarily generous in giving way. I would like to suggest a way forward by drawing, I hope, a not-too-tortured parallel. We had a vote, which was referred to in the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), on Syria. If that vote had gone the other way, I doubt whether the chemical weapons would have gone, or whether we would have had the deal with Iran. The Government are now claiming credit for those things having happened, even though they were defeated in a vote. Can the Minister see where I am going with this?”
“Well, it will become clear. I doubt whether we would have had on offer anything like as tough a regime as that constituted by IPSO without what the Government have done up till now. Would it not be an idea to give it a trial and see whether it works? The Government could then legitimately claim credit for having brought it forth, when otherwise it would not have come forth.”
“You have drawn the short straw, Mr Hood, in chairing this debate, because when I made my maiden speech on defence in the Queen’s Speech debate in 1997, you spoke after me, and were kind enough to predict that the House would be hearing a lot more from me on defence in the years to come. You were absolutely right, and I have been banging on about it ever since, although I had not expected to be making the same sort of repetitious points and representations to a Conservative-led Government as I did to the Labour Government during the more than six years in which I was my party’s spokesman on the Royal Navy, but there you are. Politics is a strange profession.”
“Was that figure derived from doctrinal consideration, and if so, what is it? My concern is that if we are to have seven frigates available for that purpose, we would need 10, not eight. I think doctrine requires at least seven to be available. Fourthly, how many of the new frigates would be necessary to escort a taskforce, whether that is an amphibious or carrier taskforce? Finally, what consideration will be given to adoption of the plug-and-play method of warship development that my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East referred to, and the importance of getting hulls in the water first and then building up capacity over the lifetime of the vessel? In the time available, I hope to speak about strategy, numbers and design concept.”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) has long been an articulate commentator on Army issues; more recently he has taken up the cudgels on behalf of the Royal Navy. If I were in charge of the Royal Air Force, I would look to my laurels, because I am sure that it is next on his agenda. To give the Minister maximum time to consider my questions, I will ask them at the beginning of my contribution rather than at the end, so he will be at liberty to ignore anything I say afterwards. First, when the main gate contracts are signed some time next year after the Scottish referendum, will a minimum of 13 frigates be ordered? Secondly, does the Minister accept that the unit cost of new frigates will be much cheaper if all 13 are ordered at the outset? Thirdly, eight of the 13 frigates will specialise in anti-submarine warfare.”
“Perhaps it is too late now—I do not know—but we could at least try to keep the number of hulls a bit larger and lessen the complexity a bit; we would then have the basis for upgrading the quality of the vessels during their lifetime.”
“When the Type 45s were designed and put into service, they had a very large gymnasium. Why? Because they were designed in such a way that at a future stage in their life cycle, when we could afford it, we would be able to plug into that large space a module of land attack cruise missiles, which would hugely increase the ships’ power, even though we felt that we could not afford to do so at the beginning. It is perfectly possible to design ships that are relatively simple, but that have that capacity; I am extremely glad to see the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) nodding in agreement. We are very capable of upgrading those ships in their lifetime, and adding to their capacity.”
“That leads to me to my final point, about the design concept, which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth East mentioned. It is about whether it might be worth looking at the other five more general-purpose hulls that are proposed to bring the total number of frigates up to 13, and whether it might be worth considering doing something simpler to get more hulls in the water from which we can regenerate the surface fleet. Back in February 2005, in putting forward that concept, I was unwise enough to say that, really, the replacement general-purpose frigates ought to be “as cheap as chips”, which is not the sort of phrase that a proud Navy wants to hear. However, the point is based on an important development that I referred to in my opening questions—the idea of plug and play.”
“I remember standing up in the House of Commons at the beginning of 2007 waxing eloquent about persistent rumours that the Government intended to mothball, if not permanently dispose of, another half a dozen frigates to take the total down to 19. In the end, that gradually slipped away, but a couple of Type 23 frigates were paid off, and effectively the total went down to 23 from 25. It took the Conservative-led coalition coming in before we went down to 19 in the 2010 SDSR, yet the concept set out in 1998 remained basically sound: we needed to be able to fulfil certain standing tasks, to protect a mobile base, and to escort an amphibious taskforce or an aircraft carrier taskforce. I do not see what doctrinal developments since then justify such a radical reduction in the numbers.”
“At the time of the strategic defence review that set out those concepts, the Labour Government proposed reducing the combined number of frigates and destroyers from 35 to 32. The admirals gritted their teeth and accepted that, but it quickly emerged that 32 had actually gone down to 31, and the then Secretary of State, Geoff Hoon, formulated what I later dubbed the “Hoon excuse”, which was, “It doesn’t really matter that we have lost an extra frigate, because they are more powerful than they used to be, so 31 ships can do what 32 used to do.” That, I am afraid, was the start of a very slippery slope. The next bite taken out of the total by the Labour Government took the number down from 31 to 25.”
“When Labour came into office in 1997, it went from 2.9% to 2.6%, then to 2.8%. Then, in successive years, it was 2.7%, 2.7% again, 2.5%, 2.5% again, and so on. That looked fairly consistent, but the problem was that during that period, we were engaged in fighting two large regional conflicts, and the Treasury was not prepared to stump up the extra money to fund those conflicts in full. As a result, we found the core military budget being eaten away by the financing of current conflicts, and since then, under the present Government, the situation has not improved. I believe that we are down to something like 2.1% of GDP at present, and I feel that that is the root of the problem.”
“As I said before, if we need a certain number of frigates—let us say as many as four to protect a taskforce, if it were in a serious regional conflict—given the roles that the frigates will have to perform in other areas, including ongoing and standing tasks, I find myself querying how the idea that we will generate a minimum of seven available anti-submarine warfare frigates from only eight out of the 13 will work. I shall say a brief word about numbers. I start from the standpoint that we are simply not spending enough on defence. I know all the economic arguments about that, but the fact is that as a proportion of gross domestic product, defence spending has declined too far down our list of priorities. Spending was between 4% and 5% during the cold war years.”
“I would like to predict that the Government will bring both carriers into service, because it would be sheer madness to build one of the largest ships that the Royal Navy has ever seen and not deploy it. The Albion, the Bulwark, and our Bay-class ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service form the core of the amphibious taskforce, and again, it would be interesting to know—although I do not expect an answer today—what plans there are to think about the next generation of assault ships to follow the Albion and the Bulwark. However, the point about the two taskforces, and the relevance to today’s debate, is that they will have to be protected against air threats, surface threats and submarine threats.”
“As we were no longer an empire and no longer had a string of bases all over the world, it would be necessary to have a portable, movable sea base that we could use to take our joint forces to the theatre in which they were engaged. That seemed sound then, and it is sound today. That concept required two sorts of taskforce: one to allow air power to be projected from the sea, hence the aircraft carriers; and the other to enable military power to be landed from the sea, hence the amphibious taskforce. Broadly speaking, we have the central elements of those taskforces. We know that the aircraft carriers are moving steadily forward, whatever financial peaks and troughs they have had in their chequered history, and that they will come to fruition.”
“Looking at the fine young people who are coming through the system and having a first-class maritime education there, I could not help wondering how many opportunities they would have, and how many naval vessels would be available for them to serve in, in the years ahead, when they go on, as so many of them do, to professional careers in the Royal Navy. I said that I would talk a bit about strategy. I have always acknowledged on a cross-party basis that the concepts of Labour’s 1998 strategic defence review were very sound. They recognised that we were no longer facing as our primary concern the cold war threat on the continent, and that if our forces were engaged, it would be in more far-flung theatres.”
“The distinction that I achieved cannot be overemphasised: I advanced from probationer ordinary seaman to full ordinary seaman. I was very proud to be one, because even in those days—it was from 1979 to 1982, or thereabouts—I was too old to be an officer cadet. I feel the bus pass jingling in my pocket. Yesterday, I took the day off and had the great pleasure of travelling to Southampton university at the invitation of Commander Chris Ling, commanding officer of Thunderer Squadron, which is the defence technical undergraduate scheme at the university, and Lieutenant Amie Jackson. She—I emphasise “she”—is the commanding officer of the warship HMS Blazer, which is attached to the university’s Royal Navy unit. It was wonderful to celebrate with them the opening of their new joint headquarters at the National Oceanography Centre.”
“It is very much one of the examples that I have in mind. Those vessels are extremely economical, but they are out there in good numbers, and as was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), who had to leave, they are exportable. I think that the Chamber has heard more than enough from me on these matters. I very much look forward to hearing the wind-ups and, in particular, answers to some of the questions I posed. If I cannot have them all just now, perhaps I can have some of them in writing.”
“Should reasserting control of our national borders be a priority? For example, does it make any more sense to have a single European work force than it does to have a single European currency?”
“Given that Syria and Iran are joined at the hip, is it not clear that no such agreement would have been reached had the plan for an Anglo-American military attack on Syria gone ahead? So while we are busy conferring praise on Governments past and present, can we at least have a pat on the back for Parliament for its role in preventing such an ill-considered move?”
“May I reassure my right hon. Friend that that excellent answer will remain on my website for as long as it takes for the pledge to be fulfilled? I notice that he used the words “Conservative-only Government”. Will he reassure the House that never again will Liberal Democrats be allowed to obstruct or delay the signing of the main gate contracts, and will he undertake to sign those contracts at the earliest possible opportunity?”
“In support of what my hon. Friend has just said, which is the single most important observation anyone can ever make about defence planning, namely the unpredictability of future crises, may I remind him—that is not to say that he needs reminding—that only a few years ago the constant predictions were that it would be all about boots on the ground for the next 30 or 40 years? Let us therefore not make the mistake of doing something too rigid when we need maximum flexibility.”
“I do not accept that more money could not have been found from within the defence budget and outside it. There could have been more money. We did not need to spend £1.4 billion extending the life of four Vanguard-class submarines just to satisfy the Liberal Democrats, so they could put off the decision to sign the main-gate contracts for the successor submarines until the next Parliament. We did not need to spend a whole shedload of money reversing the plan for two aircraft carriers and to adopt a preposterous plan for one functional and one non-functional aircraft carrier, and then spend another shedload of money reverting to the original position. Nor do we need to spend £40 billion or £50 billion on a high-speed train service to the north of England— [ Interruption. ] It has a great deal to do with it.”
“The first relates to the size of the defence budget; the second is the question of whether the scheme for the reserves is or was linked to the proposed reduction in the size of the Army. Those are the two things that worry me. Even if my hon. Friend’s new clause and amendments are not ideally drafted—I am not saying that they are not—they present me, and other hon. Members whose main purpose of being in Parliament, apart from representing our constituents, is to maximise the defence of this country against threats, with one of the few opportunities that we have to register our concerns when we think that defence has fallen too far down the list of priorities. I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) saying that the defence budget was a given. I am afraid that I do not accept that.”
“I cannot think of anyone who was better at tackling complex financial problems and explaining them in terms so crystal clear that, from time to time, I even thought that I understood them myself. In reality, I could not think of any person, when presented with a limited budget—whether for defence or any other portfolio—who would make a better fist than my right hon. Friend of adjusting the workings of the Department concerned to fit a budget that he had perhaps rather arbitrarily been allocated. That has a direct bearing on the two reasons for my putting my name down in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay’s new clause and amendments.”
“Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). My experience of his activities and positions on security issues has been wholly positive, and he has lived up to that by making his first trip as shadow Secretary of State a visit to the Barrow shipyards. I am sure that we can rely on him to maintain the firm position in support of the successor generation of submarines for the nuclear deterrent that both Front Benches adhere to, and which only one small party has sought to obstruct. Another friend to whom I would like to refer—he has just slipped out of the Chamber for a moment—is the Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond). Most people would agree that he was a very fine Treasury Minister indeed.”
“It is a pleasure to be able to say that, unlike the traveller who fell among thieves, I feel like one who has fallen among friends. On these issues, I have friends on both sides of the House, including, first and foremost, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), who has been a wonderful advocate for the reserve forces for many years. I say to him and to those on the Front Bench that if this matter had simply been put forward in isolation, I would not have contemplated voting for the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). I am thinking of doing that for two reasons but, before I go into detail, I shall mention a couple more of my friends. It is a pleasure to welcome to the Opposition Front Bench another friend, the new shadow Secretary of State for Defence, the hon.”
“If that is the case, I take great exception to the fact that this linkage was ever made in the first place. If we are to be told that we have to accept cuts in this country’s defence capability, we should be told that honestly. We should not constantly be confronted with shifting goalposts. If the recruitment of 30,000 reservists may or may not be achieved, and if the 20,000 cut in regulars will happen nevertheless and is irreversible, we should have been told that at the outset. [ Interruption. ] Somebody says, “We were.” Who said that?”
“As I said, if this scheme had been put forward on its own, I could have wholeheartedly supported it, but it was not. It was specifically put forward as a compensating factor for the Army’s regular strength being reduced by 20,000. We were told that that reduction would be compensated for by the 30,000 increase in reserves. Now we are told that that linkage no longer exists. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire asked what we will do if we find that in fact the reserve scheme is not working. If I understood him correctly—I think I did—he said that, by the time we discovered that we were not going to get the 30,000 reservists, it would be too late to regenerate any of the loss in the 20,000 regulars. [ Interruption. ] He seems to be indicating that I have understood him correctly.”
“If the hon. Gentleman had not been absent, he would have heard the great deal of discussion that took place about the priority of defence in the nation’s schedule of priorities. If he had made that bogus, so-called point of order having been here, I would have had some time for him, but given that he did not even have the courtesy to listen to the debate before making it, it was unworthy. The reality is that a nation gets the defence forces it is prepared to pay for and it can decide what level of services it will fund—whether that involves cuts in the Army, the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force that could be avoided. The next question is whether this scheme for the reserves was linked to the proposed cut in the size of the Army.”
“I do not want us to have this debate again in a few months’ time or in a few years’ time over the fact that we have neither the number of regulars we need nor the number of extra reserves that were promised. That is why, whatever the intricacies of the wording of new clause 3, I intend to support it.”
“Let us suppose that someone comes to a sovereign Parliament and says, “We are going to make a significant cut in the size of the Army, but don’t worry about it because we are going to compensate for it by building up the reserves to the tune of 30,000 people.” If there are any significant or reasonable doubts at all about whether the 30,000 target will be achieved, it is reasonable to say, “Hang on a minute, what happens if the 30,000 is not achieved?” If the answer is that the 20,000 cuts will take place in any case, it is absolutely unacceptable to have promised the 30,000 in the first place, especially as it was explicitly stated to the House that the cuts in the regulars would not be fully or irreversibly implemented until we knew that the reserves were going to be forthcoming.”
“Yes, but if so, that was always going to be the case, and we should not have been sold the package of a cut in regular numbers of 20,000 on the basis that at least we could look forward to 30,000 reservists being added. That is no way to treat a mature Parliament or to show respect for the judgment of parliamentarians who are doing their best to supply the best level of defence that we can within the budget available. A very simple principle is at stake here.”
“The vote on Syria was absolutely different from any other vote, because it was not just about humanitarian assistance; it was about helping al-Qaeda take over another country, and many of us who support humanitarian assistance would not support that.”
“May I congratulate my hon. Friend, not only on securing the debate, but on getting the tone right? I am sure that those of us who remember the era of Mao Tse-tung can see how gradually but significantly China has modernised and, to an extent, liberalised, but does my hon. Friend agree that the persecution of organisations such as Falun Gong and the repeated allegations of horrors, such as the harvesting of organs from people who have been executed, are still a stain on China’s reputation, which we must do everything, by increasing links, to encourage it to abandon?”
“Just before my hon. Friend leaves human rights, did he notice that in the recent political assembly that was held in China, there was talk of doing away with the labour camps? I do not know how seriously that is meant. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has yet taken a view, but I hope that the Minister will shed light on that in summing up.”