Defence Spending — House of Commons, 2015-03-12
Topic: Defense
Simon Reevell (Conservative, Centre-right): Last August, I was reminded of something that happened to me more than 25 years earlier. Back then, as a young infantry officer on a night-time exercise and navigating by the stars, I had to get my men through some woods. We eventually got to the edge of the trees and saw open ground ahead, but there was only a narrow point at which to exit the woods and the exit would be slow, so the gun group went first and then the rifle group, and it all seemed to go very well. I used what moonlight there was to look around and make sure that not only had everybody got out of the woods, but that they were now in position, which they were. The only thing spoiling the view was that, 250 yards to the right, a particularly distinctive tree marked where we had gone into the woods in the first place. We had not gone through the woods at all: we had got lost in the middle of them, and we were now in a very nice position, but facing completely the wrong way The plight of the 10 Russian paratroopers reminded me of that incident. Bless them, they too had become geographically embarrassed: they had ended up in Ukraine and been captured by the Ukrainian military. They were not of course any sort of force supporting the rebels; they had simply got lost in the woods. What was more interesting was the detail of where they had come from. They were from the 331st Regiment of the 98th Airborne Division. To put having at least 98 divisions into context, the Football League has more divisions than the British Army. Even making allowances, to have 331 regiments of a 98th Division means there are a lot of them; there are not a lot of us. That is illustrated by something else that happened last August. As Ukrainian troops faced Russian paratroopers, we amalgamated two of our tank regiments into one that was smaller than a single regiment would have been even a few years ago As summer turned to autumn, we hosted a bit of a do in Newport in Wales. We had previously written to all the potential guests to remind them of a few house rules, one of which was about spending 2% of GDP on defence. Along with whatever going-home gifts they received, they were all reminded of that on departure. However, we are suddenly shy of that same 2% commitment in our attitude and, potentially, in our contribution There are only two reasons why people do not spend money: the first is that they cannot afford to do so, and the second is that they can afford it but choose not to do so. We do not seem shy of making spending commitments. We have just committed to spending 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that, but it would be moon-howlingly mad to be committed to foreign aid at the expense of the defence of the realm. No one ever suggested that swords should be beaten into ploughshares before the danger is well and truly passed, and passed for good We can afford the 2%, but we are not doing it, which must mean that someone has decided that we will not. How can that be? The idea of allocating a percentage of GDP to defence, rather than a particular annual amount, is clearly designed to ensure that the necessary resources will be made available over a period of time: 2% of a lower GDP in year x is offset by 2% of a higher GDP in subsequent years Some people use the phrase "fixing the roof while the sun shines". That is a particularly commendable approach, so why on earth would anyone contemplate abandoning it for defence spending? Why would they even dream about abandoning it at a time when Russian bombers are being intercepted in the channel, over Cornwall and just off the south coast? Why would they dream of abandoning it when we have yet again learned to expect the unexpected—this time in Libya, against ISIS in Syria and Iraq and, most importantly, with article 5 commitments in the Baltic that the founders of NATO could never have contemplated? Why would we abandon it at a time when if we renamed our frigates and destroyers after premiership football teams, one of the clubs would miss out because we do not have enough ships I am not alone in having given the Government the benefit of the doubt on defence matters in the early years of this Parliament. I did so because it was clearly intimated that the effects of the measures introduced would be offset by increases in defence expenditure as the economy healed and grew. Now I hear that to come good on that deal, a search is on for anything that can be fudged as defence spending to get us to the 2% level. That sort of kindergarten economics is bad not just for defence, but for politics. It leads to damaging speculation, such as the whisper that while Regular Army numbers may be safe, the number of reservists is not guaranteed, at a time when we are in the middle of a campaign to offset cuts to the Army with a recruiting drive for non-regulars It has even been suggested that former senior military figures are misrepresenting the situation to sell books. Criticisms may be made of some former senior figures, not for misrepresenting the situation now, but for the fact that—for all their later book talk of gritted teeth and near resignation while in post—no one stepped forward and spoke out at the time; in fact, quite the opposite. I do not thank them for that, but the Government certainly should I have heard this phrase used at a party conference: "It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog" Courage and bravery are of course the hallmark of our armed forces, but the Estonian soldier waiting in his foxhole for Russian tanks may well believe that the size of the dog in the fight is also critical. We plan to underfeed our bulldog, while its potential adversaries are thrown red meat Outside those woods back in the summer of nineteen-eighty-whenever, I may have been 180° out, but no-one else noticed and, in the scheme of things, it did not matter. This does matter. In this context, it is those reinforcing the impression that we care only so much about defence who face the wrong way. In doing so, they face away from the first duty of any and every British Government, which is the duty to ensure the security of these islands, and that is a disappointing and dangerous state of affairs.