Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-10-23
Topic: Defense
Philip Martin Dunne (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for informing the House of those facts, based on his deep experience of our capabilities My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) is already proving to be a doughty champion for Cheshire, my neighbouring county. I am always pleased to see people standing up for Cheshire. She has also given tremendous support to the armed forces since arriving in the House. I applaud her for that and support her efforts. She drew attention to the contribution that defence makes to the prosperity of the nation, which I touched on earlier. She is absolutely right about the skills that defence is able to provide to our people. We are the largest employer of young people coming out of college or school into an engineering trade. We are also the largest provider of apprenticeship programmes in the country and the largest provider of skilled employees back into the civilian workforce, once military careers come to an end. We therefore play an enormous role, which needs to be more widely acknowledged, in helping to upskill our nation My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) explained the significance to defence of RAF Marham in Norfolk, as the home of the Tornado squadron, including 31 Squadron, with which, as we discovered, his father served. RAF Marham will become the home of the squadron for the new F-25B joint strike fighter, Lightning II, when it is stood up. He spoke powerfully of the role of international development aid as a pump primer for trade to help recipient countries to emerge into self-sufficiency I would like to dwell for a moment on the mutually supportive role that humanitarian aid spending can play to help to keep this country and its citizens secure. With the present conflicts in the middle and near east, the United Kingdom is able to use the aid budget, through DFID, to provide vital humanitarian assistance. As hon. Friends are aware, refugees from the Syrian civil war have received £1.1 billion from the United Kingdom. We are the largest donor outside of the US to those suffering from this appalling civil war, and in Yemen we are the fourth largest donor, which is not quite so well known, following the US and regional donors. We have pledged £75 million to humanitarian relief stemming from the civil war in that country. There is therefore a vital role for us to play as a nation, and the pledge to contribute 0.7% of GNI—which I will come to later and which is used to help refugees in those places—helps us as a nation to remain more secure, so in my mind there is a clear linkage between these two pledges My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough spoke movingly of the role of defence in our midst, especially in his county of Lincolnshire. RAF Scampton is of course the home of the Red Arrows, who play such a vital role in promoting the air force and will, I believe, play a part in welcoming the Prime Minister of India on his visit, which will be exciting to watch. Lincolnshire is also, as he told us, home to RAF Coningsby, one of the three operating bases for combat jets across the UK, and RAF Waddington, the operating base for our ISTAR—information, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—assets, or at least it will be again, once its runway has been resurfaced, which is under way at the moment As a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, my hon. Friend spoke knowledgeably about the risks to good government of ring-fencing, as we have discussed. He also raised the problem of target setting, with the attendant risk of skewing procurement, not least given the challenges, which I am grateful to him for acknowledging, that exist in managing such a significant procurement programme as we have in defence It was good to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) to a defence debate. She acknowledged that she is not an habitual attender, unlike many of the other colleagues who have participated in the debate, and it was refreshing to hear a different approach. She emphasised how the military can and does support humanitarian efforts, often on a cross-government basis, to help other nations in distress. She referenced Sierra Leone and Nepal—I will have something else to say about Sierra Leone in a few minutes. I would like to draw her attention to the role that the military was able to play in bringing relief to the people of the Bahamas earlier this month, when a just-under hurricane strength storm ripped across the islands, causing mudslides and wreaking havoc. As it happens, I was the Minister on duty on the day and was able to authorise the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Lyme Bay to go to the assistance of the people of the Bahamas. It was there for a few days and provided invaluable help to the people of those islands My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) started by enlightening the House about his formative—may I say existential?—relationship with the Royal Navy. He welcomed our plans to develop new capabilities for our armed forces, but cautioned us on the importance of avoiding waste and poor decision making in improving our procurement processes. As he has an interest in this, I hope he will take the opportunity to look at what we are doing in our equipment plan, which was published yesterday, and will appreciate what the National Audit Office said—which was little short of praise—for the progress made thus far. We are acutely aware that we cannot rest on our laurels. It is important to continue to bear down on inefficiency.