Strength of the UK’s Armed Forces — House of Commons, 2021-04-14
Topic: Defense
John Healey (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is right, of course. There has been an £8 billion real-terms cut to the defence budget since 2010. That is part of the reason that we have seen 45,000 full-time forces cut over the last decade. I will return to some of those points For now, I want to make this point: we can destroy enemy forces with technology, but we cannot seize and hold ground without troops. Drones and robots do not win hearts and minds; they do not mend broken societies; they do not give covid jabs. These deeper cuts now planned could limit our forces’ capacity simultaneously to deploy overseas, support allies, maintain our own strong national defences and reinforce our domestic resilience, as we have seen our troops do to help our country through the covid crisis. Other countries have expanded troop numbers even as they develop technology. They do not see this as a "manpower or machines" question, but as personnel and technology together. Although high-tech weapons systems are essential, highly-trained personnel are simply indispensable, and size matters These planned cuts are damaging for four reasons. Let us call them "the four Rs". The first is resilience. Cutting Army numbers reduces the UK’s national resilience by reducing our capacity to react to unforeseen circumstances at home and abroad—not just major wars, but insurgencies such as Afghanistan, international interventions such as Sierra Leone or Kosovo, and emergency support operations such as post terrorist attacks or during covid The second "R" is readiness. The rapid response required to the unexpected also requires highly-trained, adaptable, cohesive combat troops, which even the best reserves, called up as last-minute reinforcements, cannot provide The third "R" is renewal. The fewer troops and full-strength battalions we have, the less able the Army is to sustain long campaigns. Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq all required the long-term rotation of troops. We are a leading member of NATO. We are one of the P5 countries at the UN Security Council. We may again be called on to deploy and sustain forces away from the UK. We may not seek a major crisis, but we may well face a major crisis that comes to us The final "R" is reputation. The current Chief of the Defence Staff said in 2015 that the ability to field a single war-fighting division was "the standard whereby a credible army is judged", yet the fully capable division mandated then, including a new strike brigade, will not be battle-ready for another 10 years according to evidence that the MOD gave to the Defence Committee in the autumn. A former CDS, General Sir David Richards, has said that further cuts to the Army would mean that the UK was "no longer taken seriously as a military power" and that this would "damage our relationship with the US and our position in NATO" My second argument is that this is not just about numbers. In the face of growing threats and the increasing ambition for the global role that our armed forces will play, there is a strong case against, not for, some of the Government’s short-term capability cuts. Taking two Type 23 frigates out of service in the next two years will reduce the Navy’s anti-submarine strength. Ending the RAF’s E-3 planes will leave a two-year gap in airborne early warning before the E-7 Wedgetails come into service in 2023. The Army is losing nine Chinook helicopters, 14 Hercules transporter planes and 20 Puma support helicopters The third argument is one that I am sad to have to make, and it is this: we are faced now with more of the same. After a decade of decline since 2010, which the Prime Minister called an "era of retreat", the Defence Secretary promised that this defence review would be different from the last two Conservative defence reviews, which weakened the foundations of our armed forces. They were driven by finances, not by threats, cutting full-time forces by 45,000 and cutting critical defence capabilities and upgrades, alongside plans for full capability forces in the future that have not been fulfilled. I fear that this defence review simply makes the same mistakes of the past Fourth and finally, in November, when the Prime Minister announced the extra funding as part of a four-year funding settlement, we welcomed it as promising a long overdue upgrade of Britain’s defences, so we are dismayed now by more defence cuts, despite this £16.5 billion boost. But I guess it is not hard to see why. The defence budget was balanced in 2012, and the equipment programme was fully funded, but Ministers since then have lost control. The National Audit Office has now judged the defence equipment plan unaffordable for the last four years in a row and reports a black hole of more than £17 billion over the next 10 years. This black hole in the defence budget has grown by £4 billion in the last year, on this Defence Secretary’s watch. The MOD’s annual report and accounts suggest that the annual marginal cost for 10,000 Army personnel is around half a billion pounds. This deficit alone each year could cover the cost of maintaining Army numbers three times over The new defence budget is not all it seems. Ministers talk about the rise in capital funding but not the real cut in revenue funding over the next four years, which means less money for forces’ recruitment, training, pay and families. It means a possible cut of 40% to the budget of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. Worse still, over half this year’s £16.4 billion defence equipment budget is revenue-based for equipment support and maintenance. This revenue cut is the Achilles heel of defence plans. No other Whitehall Department is projected to have a cut in day-to-day spending between now and 2024-25. The Defence Secretary should never have agreed it This defence review and the defence and security industrial strategy announce nothing new that Ministers are doing to get a grip of the MOD’s budget failings and to make the most of this big, one-off opportunity from the extra funding. So I say to the Minister: get to grips with the budget, consider the concerns raised, rethink the plans and report back to Parliament before the end of June. Britain was promised better, Britain deserves better and Britain needs better from its Defence Department.