Defence Supplementary Estimate 2021-22 — House of Commons, 2022-03-09
Topic: Defense
Andrew Campbell Bowie (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to rise to speak in this debate. I have been nearly five years in this place, and every six months or so—periodically at least—we come together to discuss defence. Usually, it is the same old voices and the same points being made, and we all go away saying, "It is good to hear a unified Chamber all speaking as one asking for more to be spent on defence and for more interest to be shown in the defence community or the armed forces in general." Undoubtedly, we would hear a polite and eloquent response from the Minister at the Dispatch Box—I am expecting no less from today’s Minister—espousing the great extent to which the UK Government were investing more in the armed forces and where it was being spent. The difference today is that we are conducting this debate at a time when images are being shown on our television screens of events happening in Europe now that we thought we would be witnessing only in history books or documentaries—a Europe of 1942, not of 2022. That puts this debate into context. We are talking about defence spending and the estimates, so the debate gives us the chance to interrogate the MOD’s expenditure and to look at wider defence spending. As I was mentioning those on the Treasury Bench, I must pay tribute to the excellent work that Ministers, specifically those in this Department, have been doing over the past few weeks, keeping us all informed, carrying the message to the British public about what we are doing to support the Ukrainian people and ensuring that the Ukrainian armed forces got the training and the equipment that they need to stop Russia and to stop Vladimir Putin doing what he is doing I wish to make two points. The first is on the continual debate about percentage spending. We should always remember that 2% is the minimum we are expected to spend on defence by NATO. We now need to look very much at what that 2% is. What does the 2% mean when it comes to UK defence spending? A 2016 report by the Defence Committee called "Shifting the goalposts?" showed that now the 2% includes war pensions, contributions to United Nations peacekeeping, pensions for retired civilian MOD personnel and MOD income, among other things. Fair enough, if that is to be included in defence spending, that is to be included in defence spending, but we should not for one minute assume that if we are saying we are spending 2% of GDP on defence, it is being spent on defence equipment or on personnel; it now covers a far bigger, wider range of things than it used to when we were calculating what we were contributing to the overall NATO budget The report also said: "The 2% pledge, while necessary, may not be sufficient. We believe that the focus should not be merely on a headline figure, but on whether this expenditure can possibly provide a sound defence for the UK." Never has that been more true than today, given what we are witnessing in Europe. As has been said time and time again, mass still matters. When the integrated review was published last year, I welcomed much of it. I think we do need to invest in cyber and psy-ops—psychological operations—and we need to spend more on the Royal Navy, in a period when our need to be in charge of the seas, to protect freedom of navigation, especially in the South China sea, with our allies over there, is very important. But it is absolutely true that, as so many Members have said today, a plan survives only until first contact with the enemy. We must now look at the assumptions made in the integrated review, because they are simply out of date. I am not saying we should review the review—goodness me, we all know how much time and effort is taken by defence reviews in general—but it is essential that we look at what we are currently doing and at where we will spend money in the near future. It is simply inconceivable that we are about to reduce the size of our Army by 10,000 personnel. At a time when allies of ours are being invaded by an aggressive foe, it is simply untenable for us to send the signal that we are reducing the size of our armed forces. That has to be looked at again. I echo the words of so many of my colleagues when I say that we really must increase spending on defence. Defence is not a luxury item, a "might have" or an addition; it is essential to who we are and what we deliver for our allies around the world. We do deliver for our allies around the world, but we need to ensure that we do so in the most efficient manner possible.